Bill Maher – Spot on buddy…
Bill Maher tells some truths. See the video on onegoodmove.
Thanks to Pharyngula for the link.
September 2007
Song of the Day: Young Folks – Peter Bjorn and John & Victoria Bergsman
I thought I’d written about the Swedish group, The Concretes, here on the Soapbox before. But it seems not. I’ve been into the group for a few years now. For several reasons, one of which was the vocals of Victoria Bergsman. I say was, because it seems she has left the group. Not all doom and gloom though, as she has a new solo project called Taken by Trees, plus The Concretes have a new album out and Victoria Bergsman is featured on the wonderful Peter Bjorn and John track called Young Folks.
Victoria Bergsman (Click picture for larger view)
BTW: The Taken by Trees album, Open Field, is excellent. She really does have a wonderful voice.
iPod touch Notes
The iPod touch lacks the Notes application that is on the iPhone. As a work around for this (until Apple gets the message and adds it via a software update!) you can create a Contact called Notes and use the Note field of the contact to record snippets, to-dos, etc. on the go. The Contacts app on the iPod touch only shows fields with data in them. So Set the first name filed to Notes and put text in the Notes field and these are the only two fields that will be visible for that entry. When the iPod touch is synced with MacOS X the Notes entry and its associated text will be available in AddressBook. And vice versa, changed in AddressBook will sync to the touch.
Sea front stroll
I posted earlier about getting sun burnt in San Francisco. I was curious how far it was from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Bay Bridge. Using Google Maps to get directions it seems it is 5.9 miles. See picture below. More pictures of the route here and here.
Click picture for larger view. Route is blue line, sort of. The actual walk hugged the coast more at North Beach and Fort Mason
New course: Natural and artificial intelligence
Just got electronic access to the first few books for a new Open University course that starts on 6th October. It’s a 3rd level computing course called Natural and Artificial Intelligence. It covers traditional AI research and how ideas from biological systems and evolution are shaping AI ideas. Finished the introductory book already. Good stuff. Looking forward to the rest of the course. Also start the recently introduced course on evolution next February.
The exam for the AI course is sometime around 14th June 2008. I’m hoping that means it’ll be in the week after Saturday 14th and that it doesn’t clash with WWDC 2008. It looks from the Moscone Center web page for June 2008 that there are non Apple events on in the Moscone West on the weeks beginning 16th and 23rd June. Looks like the event listed as Corporate Event from Sunday 8th June to Friday 13th June in Moscone West will be next years WWDC. I’ve got enough British Airways air miles for a free flight from Heathrow to San Francisco, and enough Marriott Rewards points for almost a week in a hotel. So should be able to do WWDC next year pretty cheaply.
Song of the Day: Twilight of the Gods – Paul Roland
Thrown up on random play on a flight from San Francisco. It has an excellent guitar solo in the 2nd half of the song. Paul Roland’s stuff is very quirky but I love it. Snippet available on iTMS.
Brrr….
About 15 minutes out from landing in Belfast last night, on the way back from San Francisco via London Heathrow, the pilot comes on the intercom to say we’d be landing soon and that the weather was sunny but that the wind was from the north, As a result it would feel colder than it has been recently. Boy he was right. When I got out of the plane it was bloomin’ freezing. Spending a week in the nice San Francisco climate probably had a lot to do with it, but boy it felt cold. Got home and fired up the central heating. Then slept for 12 hours 🙂
Lobster boy
A few years ago I was in San Diego and got the head burnt off me by the Sun. I learnt my lesson then and don’t venture out in sunny climes now without a hat. I’ve now learnt the same lesson for my arms and neck! During a walk from the Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco yesterday, I got sunburnt on my arms and neck a lot. Lobster Boy rides again! Next time I’m walking along the sea front in San Francisco, it’ll be Factor 50 sun block for me (next time will either be MacWorld in January 2008 or the Apple WWDC in June 2008).
Posted from my iPod touch.
Update: Pictures from said stroll along the sea front are available here.
iPod touch post
So I read on TUAW that some iPod touch units were starting to hit the Apple stores in the USA. So I hightailed it round to the San Francisco store to see if I could get one. I did. A 16GB one. There are unboxing photos in the web gallery linked on the right. In addition to being an iPod, it’s also a WiFi enabled Internet device. If you are reading this post then it seems that I can post to this site using the built in Safari web browser. More details and thoughts on the device to follow.
Update: Post spell checked and categories set from my MacBook Pro a few hours after posting from the iPod touch.