Lego Star Wars Battles

Team Daddy

Team Nathan

I bought Nathan some Star Wars Lego after we watched Episodes I to III. He also saw IV a while ago. I was chuffed when he wanted the Episode V Empire Strikes Back stuff.

Anyway, I wrote a quick and dirty war-game he seems to like. Very much a work in progress but you can find it here.

Naturally, he wiped me out, both games we’ve played so far!

Happy New Year.

Turning 40

Birthday Meal at the Muse - I stress that it was my 40th, not these two!

This is a blog entry I have been meaning to write for a while, but I kept putting it off. I’m not certain if that means that I’m in denial about the ageing process, or if it just means that I have been silly mad busy over the last two months. I’ll stick with the latter for now. I know that a 40th was the first significant birthday of my parents that I remember!

Significant birthdays become a problem for me, ever since my 30th. Being born on September 11 means that you share the birthday with one of the worst terrorist atrocities ever committed. As I was born in 1971, it means that Al Qaeda’s attack on the twin towers will always have a significant anniversary when I have a significant birthday. 9/11 will always cast a shadow.

Putting that aside, it is fair to say that both my 30th and 40th birthdays were great fun, in no small measure because of Jill. She’s great at plotting and scheming very memorable events. My 40th celebrations were spread over a full month, and the final event was a complete surprise.

One of my pics of the couple

My parents came over to visit a few days before my birthday as my birthday-weekend had become quite complicated due to the fact that some close friends were getting married on Saturday the 10th (Hi Katrina and Tom!) and I had agreed to be the photographer for them. This ruled out any idea of a weekend away from home. The weather was fantastic, and we had a great time. There was a creché for the children during the wedding breakfast so we had somewhere that Nathan and Aidan could stay while I took pictures. Jill had also arranged the wedding cake through her sister Paula, who is superb at such things. Of course, that is to be expected as Paula is a chef in her day job. A great day, with a wonderful couple.

Paula and her fiancé Mark had decided to use the trip to Yorkshire to have a small break and they offered to take Nathan with them for a treat. So he disappeared off on Saturday night, leaving Jill, myself and Aidan to our own devices. As a result, the day of my birthday was quite lazy. We had a very relaxed meal at a local bar restaurant called ‘the Muse’. Aidan was very entertaining as he kept on trying to steal my beer. It’s a habit he shares with his older brother. We had cake and party tea when Paula and Mark returned to Wetherby.

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I got a wonderful gadget from my birthday, an Amazon Kindle, from my parents. I love reading, always have, hopefully always will and this is really to carry a lot of books out around at once. It’s perfect for holidays especially with sunshine. The Kindle app on the iPad is good, but doesn’t really work in bright light. However it definitely has the edge in the darkness thanks to the backlighting. The only thing the Kindle is missing is the tactile experience of the book as an artefact.

Jill’s presents to me were experiences rather than gadgets, books or other media. The first was a couple weeks later with a visit to Centre Parcs at Sherwood where we met up with some old university friends of mine; Ceri, Nick and their Daughter Nia, and Jon & Becky.

We went there for a long weekend as there is plenty to entertain the kids. Highlights included my birthday meal as Jill had booked it like a children’s party but with the option of cocktails (Mojitos!), a badminton match between Jon and myself, and a fantastic afternoon at the spa for Jill and I to relax and chill out without the boys. All in all, we had a brilliant time.

The final surprise was possibly the most memorable as I wasn’t expecting it at all. I’ve long been a fan of John le Carré, and Jill had outdone herself by having the small local cinema in Wetherby for a private showing of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”. By “private” I mean the two of us and some close friends. This included my parents and some family friends who had travelled across from Cheshire, plus people from work, the church, and gaming. It was a wonderful experience. The cinema is pretty small and it is of an old-style. But, in reality, it was perfect. The people running the Wetherby Cinema were very welcoming, and even gave us an option of whether we wanted an interval or to run straight through. Unsurprisingly, we opted for an interval with ice creams.

It was a fantastic end to my 40th birthday celebrations and a memory I’ll cherish for a long time. I’m blessed with a wonderful wife, lovely kids, a great family and generous friends. Thank you, one and all. (*)

(*)And, in the light of the weekend’s news of the death of a family friend far too young from cancer, this means more to me than ever.

Talking to myself

I've always been deeply sceptical about the utility of voice recognition software. There's always seem to be so much that was a pipe dream about it. The background noise, differences in the user's voices and many other complications such as processing power all combine to make it very difficult thing to do.

My scepticism weakened a little when I tried the free Dragon Dictation application for the iPhone. Although the processing for this was done via the Cloud, the results were deeply impressive when I tried it. Apple's Siri voice detection system and personal assistant also showed great promise. So when I heard that Dragon had released a new application by the App Store, called Dragon Express, which mirrored the iPhone application using local processing I couldn't resist trying it.

I'm dictating this using the internal microphone on my MacBook. There is a stage of about 2 min of training for Dragon Express it adjusts to my voice, the microphone, and the typical background noise. The accuracy of the voice recognition is quite impressive. You do have to speak slowly and clearly, but that actually encourages you to think about what you are saying. If anything, it clarifies your thought processes. There have only been a few stumbles in translating what I've said. An example of that will be the word "free" which could get mistaken for the number "three". Indeed, I did have to manually alter that word to correct it.

The software does suffer from the problem are shown by Isaac Asimov's "Second Foundation" scene involving Arkady where an entire conversation is inadvertently recorded for posterity. If you leave it open and running it will listen to you and assume you're talking to it. However, I could actually see a use for this. Maybe not when the children around, but now it's quite an evening with the kids in bed it means I can be quite lazy in preparing material. All in all, so far I'm impressed. Well done, Nuance, this could change the way I work.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dragon-express/id458613689?mt=12 Requires Lion.

Kindling my reading

I was very lucky for my 40th (more about this to follow) and was given a Kindle by my parents, and some lovely skins and covers by my sister, not to mention lots of Amazon vouchers by a wide variety of people. Whilst I still have a fetish for paper, it’s a great device to read on and reading on is what I have been doing. Here are nutshell reviews of the first five books that I’ve read:

The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Mohsin Hamid)
I heard parts of this and the interesting discussion on it on Radio 4's Book Club and it seemed intriguing. It's effectively a monologue, as you only have the words of the protagonist. It isn't necessarily the most realistic tale, but it sucks you in. Effectively, it's the tale of a Pakistani man who starts by embracing the American dream, but then is slowly repelled by it post 9/11. Well written and a page turner as the protagonist's life and background are unfolded during a meal and a walk with an American stranger.

The Coming Convergence (Stanley Schmidt)
Non-fiction looking how the interaction between different rivers of technological development leads to huge changes. Part of background reading for Singularities.


Rule 34 (Charles Stross)
Stross' latest near future police tale (effectively revisiting the same vibe as the earlier Halting State) set in Edinburgh with a murder investigation. Good stuff - I'll say no more lest I ruin it. You can google 'rule 34' to get a hint at what underpins the plot. Or you can read the first three chapters on Stross' blog.


Zero History (William Gibson)
Gibson wraps up the ideas he's played with in Pattern Recognition and Spook Country in another really strong near-future thriller. Great stuff as you can savour every word. It has forced me to start to re-read Pattern Recognition as it's too long since I last read it.


Hull Zero Three (Greg Bear)
A tale set in deep space onboard a slower-than-light starship. The protagonist wakes to a world of cold and horror with limited memories. His journey is significant to the future of the ships as he rediscovers who and what the mission was and what has affected it. Very good stuff.

Aidan's First Bike Ride

Happy Chap!

We went out on the bikes this afternoon. In my case, it was pretty much the first time this year, which is shocking when I look back to how much I was out with Nathan last year. Once I’d done the maintenance on Jill’s and my bikes (tyres, brakes, oiling the gearing) we reattached the baby seat and tried Aidan in it. He fitted well, and wasn’t bouncing around. Nathan was taking his bike out too, stabilisers and all.

Pausing for breath, Nathan looks back for his mum.

We set off, and ended up on the Harland Way, the old ‘Beeching-ed’ rail line from Wetherby to Harrogate. Aidan was happy as Larry, but Nathan was moaning a little about his legs needing a rest. Nathan was also pretty hard to distract from blackberries in the hedges.

Jill arrives, having had to shove Nathan up the hill!

Nathan decided that we needed to turn right onto the bridleway heading east, which Jill and I agreed to as we’d never gone that way before. Nathan struggled with the drag from the stabilisers in the grass on the slope up, and Jill bore the brunt of giving him a shove when needed. We got to see the housing estate from a completely different angle, which really showed how it nestled between woods and farmer’s fields on three sides.

Both the boys were shattered when they got home – Aidan actually head-butted me as he fell asleep – as the mile and a half were a quite a distance. Certainly, it’s the furthest Nathan has been under his own steam on the bike.

Spofforth Castle

It’s fair to say that this was the second ‘thing that we haven’t done in the last 9 years’. On Friday, after I dropped Aidan at the nursery I headed home with Nathan, but we took a detour and stopped at the Swings and then at the Castle (really the ruin of a fortified manor house) in Spofforth. Nathan loved exploring it, and then got really excited when a whole string of tractors went past.

It was Nathan’s last chance for a special day without Aidan around before Nathan went to school, so he had a fantastic afternoon with Jill who took him out to a farm and café near Bolton Abbey, plus an ice cream place while I stayed home, did work and picked up Aidan from his first proper day at nursery. He’s doing one day a week now to get him used to it for when Jill goes back to work.

In case you were wondering...

Wikileaks just lost its link from this site because of this.

WikiLeaks has published its full archive of 251,000 secret US diplomatic cables, without redactions, potentially exposing thousands of individuals named in the documents to detention, harm or putting their lives in danger. 

Source: Guardian.co.uk

Although I believe that there is definitely a space for putting things in the open, this steps over the principle of not causing harm where unnecessary. The original releases were redacted to protect individuals who could have been at risk; this release is more like the kind of stunt that Lulzsec or Anonymous pull. Hence no more linkage to the IP address.

Review: 'The Departure' by Neal Asher

The Departure is the latest book from Neal Asher and the start of a new series, 'The Owner novels', which sees him move away from the Agent Cormac / Polity universe that will be familiar to his past readers.

Asher is one of the strongest and most prolific voices in SF at the moment. Along with Reynolds, Stross and MacLeod he has put a new vigour in the genre. His ability to write fast-paced, twisting and interesting stories reminds me of the late David Gemmell's novels in fantasy: maybe not the absolute best, but you can guarantee an enjoyable, well written story that will have you wanting more at the end.

The Departure opens with the protagonist, Alan Saul, waking up on a conveyor into the Calais Incinerator without any clear memories of who he was and why he was there, only knowledge of the fact that he had been tortured in an Inspectorate Cell and the memory of the face of his tormentor. He is accompanied by an voice in his head called Janus, that claims it is an artificial intelligence and that it was created at the same time that he wore up. Naturally, Saul sets off to find out who he is, why he was dumped at the incinerator and how he can have revenge on his torturer.

It's a bleak future, completely different to that shown in the Polity novels. Earth is controlled by the Committee, a bureaucratic totalitarian regime trying unsuccessfully to manage the limited resources of a hugely over-populated world. Life has lost its value and brutality and starvation are common. A resource crash is coming and the only likely way to prevent it is the same as the results that it would engender; the deaths of billions of people. The extrapolation is scary, as it could easily been seen as a logical extension of the ways that population, politics and technology have been going since the 9/11 attacks.

The story ranges from the slums of Earth to the orbital majesty of the Argus station and out as far as the small human colony on Mars. The pace rapidly picks up, and the back story is filled in nicely as the plot races on. It resolves well, but leaves the hooks hanging and the stage set for a sequel.

All in all, a enjoyable, above average read that leaves you wanting to find out what happens next, having set the scene for the further books. Truly the David Gemmell of SF.

PS Shout out to Neil Ford for the chance to read this. Thanks!

Newby Hall Pictures

Some pictures from Newby Hall yesterday:

Aidan & I.

Nathan & Jill

Growing up so fast

Big Little Boy - climbing earlier this weekend

Jill, Nathan, Aidan and I had a lovely day out today at Newby Hall. We pottered about the grounds, enjoyed the model ride-on railway, had ice-creams, munched scones, had a picnic and a good explore without ever entering the house. Jill & Nathan even went on a boat ride on the River Ure whilst I enjoyed a quiet thirty minutes on the bank-side reading while Aidan napped. It was a wonderful afternoon; nothing earth-shattering, but great family stuff.

Shattered after a long walk on Sunday

It was on the way home that it hit home that everything is about to change again, and so soon after the adjustment that Aidan's arrival brought this year. My big little boy is going to start school in a fortnight and leave the nursery where he has had 3 delightful years. It makes me feel nervous and excited at the same time. He's ready for it, but am I? It certainly makes you more aware of your own mortality.

Or maybe that's my forthcoming Fortieth birthday?

Meanwhile, Aidan is now sitting up unassisted, rolling over and around the room, and getting ever-so close to crawling. More change.

Misdiagnosis & Treatment

(cc)2011 Laura Anne Chamberlain, on Flickr, some rights reserved

If you live in, or come from, the UK, the last week has been pretty harrowing with rioting and looting spreading from London out to other cities like Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham and Bristol. I found myself glued to the BBC News channel, Twitter and Facebook until after 2am in the morning on the worst night, unable to stop watching as the armies of disillusioned idiots trashed their communities in an orgy of disorder and destruction.

The Police were slow in responding and putting enough people on the street to contain and deal with the problem, but worked damn hard to resolve the issue. I've seen multiple messages from people who have relatives and loved ones who were pulling 20 hour shifts while they tried to get a grip. Generally, the provinces seemed to get control faster than the Met did in London, but perhaps that's because they were forewarned and had far less media focus.

The politicians made up for their failure to realise the significance of the events with their macho posturing when they returned from holiday, and tried to shift the blame away to the police. They also tried to claim that the successful shift in tactics was driven by them, rather than the police, a position that they have subsequently had to backtrack from. Now they've moved into a combination of moral pontification and hanging judge-like behaviour as they want to be seen to 'be doing something'. This is quite repellent, as many of the individuals preaching would have been to have considered as committing fraud had they handled their expenses in the way that they did in organisations outside Parliament.

I find the focus on increasing police powers to deal with such events disturbing, especially as the trouble was controlled using no additional powers but rather by providing the manpower and focus that was needed. Social media was being blamed, especially Twitter and Blackberry Messenger. Strange, as most of the traffic I was seeing was condemning the violence. It's a medium of communication, rather than a cause, and there are other routes that could be used such as SMS, email or private BBS if people wanted to bypass these methods. Interestingly, ordinary people using Twitter were very visible in coordinating the community in clean up operations.

We seem to be forgetting that 20% of under-24s[1] are unemployed and many others forced to stay in education – which has been made more expensive over the last few years – as there is no route into gainful employment in the current economic climate. We have a situation were we are creating a generation with little hope; perhaps even a generation who cannot see a way to equal, let alone match their parent's standards of living. It's a European-wide problem [2] which will no doubt haunt us.

None of this excuses the chaos we saw earlier in the week, not at all, but it does say that perhaps our political masters need to be thinking how they address the underlying disease at the same time as they deal with the symptoms. They may also want to reconsider the wisdom of the way that they are making cuts to some of the services that deal with these areas.

The courts are making examples of those caught, with magistrates regularly sending convicted individuals to the Crown Court for sentencing. This, I feel, is right. However, I'd rather be seeing a combination of custodial and community service in the punishment meted out, rather than just custodial. This gives a chance to the individuals to pay back the damage they have caused to the communities that suffered as a result of their actions.

It's an awful mess, and I worry that the temptation to deal with it in a knee-jerk manner will result in the underlying problem not being resolved and returning to haunt us again. Fundamentally, I don't think new powers are needed but rather a better resolution of underlying issues and flash points. Not a good week, for anyone.

[1] https://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jul/22/youth-employment-rate-lowest
[2] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/8564500/Interactive-graphic-Youth-unemployment-in-Europe.html

Welcome to the Future...

 

I’ve just brought live the webpage for the RPG that I’ve been working on, called Singularities. Hopefully, it will be ready to go to print by the end of the year. Not much there yet, but it will develop.

Singularities RPG

It’s a hard SF veneered universe using the very playable Wordplay engine.

Which Shade of Green?

We were shopping in Sainsbury's when I saw the sign above the soft fruit section which declared how green their green credentials because of the 333 tonnes of plastic that they'd saved by replacing plastic with film lids. That change would also reduce the CO2 generated in transport, as the film is significantly lighter than the plastic lids. It may also have allowed more punnets to the transported in a single lorry.

However, the new film isn't recyclable, which the old lids were. Straight to landfill or incineration as there aren't any other options. If most of the people who bought the strawberries were recycling the lids, then the 333 tonne saving may have little overall effect.

It demonstrates how being 'green' is not easy, as the different challenges and principles are in a dynamic tension. There's no easy way to address everything at once, and it's so easy to accuse people of greenwash when they genuinely think they're trying to achieve something.

The Adjustment Bureau

Jill and I just managed to watch the DVD of The Adjustment Bureau, which is an adaptation of a Philip K Dick short story, The Adjustment Squad. Actually getting the time to watch it was no mean feat in itself, as we have a ninety minute window between the boys all falling asleep and Aidan waking up wanting a milk top-up. We ended up watching in two sittings over consecutive nights, but it didn't ruin the effect.

It's a romantic SF thriller which revolves around free will. The two protagonists, a politician (Matt Damon) and a Dancer (Emily Blunt) seem to be made for each other, but a shadowy organisation called The Adjustment Bureau is trying to make sure they are kept apart because it will upset their plan. Although that should probably be Plan with a capital P.

It's a quiet, thoughtful movie with doses of the sinister and action and good chemistry between the leads. We enjoyed it and I will watch it again. Four out of Five.

Great Yorkshire Show

We had a lovely day out today at the Great Yorkshire Show on the outskirts of Harrogate. Nominally an agricultural show, it has long expanded to include a celebration of the best of everything from Yorkshire and beyond, and in doing so it has become the biggest such show in the UK. Along the way it avoided the fate of the Royal Show, which failed to adapt to the changing world and has since disappeared.

Of course, with a tractor-mad four year old, this was always going to be a good day provided we could manage his excitement and tiredness. Nathan had a brilliant day, visiting every stand that sold tractors and pretty much every tractor toy in the show. He went on the big show ground wheel ride which gave a view of the whole place, something he used to plan his visit to the tractors, identifying which ones he wanted to see first.

We visited some of the food stands, the Black Sheep Ale Tent and the ever entertaining Sheep Show (in reality Sheep Show III). It was a lovely family day.

Aidan seemed to be happy too, but he appears to have his first cold, the poor mite.

The journey home (usually takes ten minutes) took an hour, thanks to the traffic, but we didn't notice it in part because Jill was entertaining me with comments on a Facebook comment war that had broken out on one of her friend's walls. It was a classic case of someone arrogantly and stupidly making a sweeping statement on something that would affect maybe 90% of their audience, and then not knowing when to let it go and kill the thread.

All in all, a lovely day!

--
I realise I haven’t posted for a while, but holiday and exams intervened. I’ll post some more as time permits to fill in the gaps.

Brothers in Arms

I love this picture of Nathan and Aidan. Sure, the resolution is poor (the iPhone 3GS camera struggles in lower light) but, as the saying goes, the best camera is the one that you have to hand. The expressions are delightful: it almost looks like Aidan is bigger than Nathan!

They're both very different characters: if anything, Aidan is more relaxed and chilled out than Nathan. He does amuse me no end when he sees Nathan messing around and gives him a look as if to say, "You're so full of it", amd shakes his head. Aidan also sings when he's had milk and is happy and doesn't want to go to sleep! The nicest thing is the way that Nathan is really protective of his 'little brother' and also comes up to him and says things like, "Who's a cheeky little fella?!”

Of course, it's dreadful when they both decide that they can't sleep and tag team us, but let's not mention that!

That's Going to Hurt in the Morning [updated]

Rainbow over the Millennium Field in Wetherby while I walked down to the Leisure Centre.

I just went swimming seriously for the first time in a couple of years. By seriously, I mean that I was there to do lengths of the pool for exercise rather than being a launching platform and co-conspirator for a four year old boy.

To add to the fun, I walked there and back as well gaining an extra 2,000 steps for my Global Corporate Challenge(*) Pedometer. Hurrah! I did 20 lengths in two 10 length blocks, plus another couple winding down. Not as far as I used to, but I worked hard and decided not to overdo it. Anyway, half a kilometre isn't bad for a first go(**).

I've got that good achey feeling around my joints now, with muscles that haven't been used in a while reminding me that they're there. I'm sure it's going to hurt tomorrow, but for now the buzz is enough.

All of us went swimming today: Jill & Aidan also did Water Babies and Nathan went to Knaresborough for his lessons.

(*) This is my third year participating in the GCC, which is a health promotion set up that work gets involved in. It's driven about walking 10,000 steps a day (you also get credits for swimming and cycling) and raising your health awareness. Last year, I managed an average over 11,000 steps a day – not bad for a desk jockey – which was about a thousand up on the year before that. I'll be happy if I get above 11,000 this year. Nearly two weeks in and not quite where I want to be yet. But there's time to pull it up yet!

(**) 15,937 steps today if you wanted to know!

Update: It did hurt. Ouch.

Think I'm happy about this

Poll comparing Guardian reader and Daily Mail reader responses (via Ben Goldacre on Twitter). 

[Link removed as dead May 2021]

The Dream Could be Alive Again...

Seeing things like this makes me feel less bad about the retirement of the Space Shuttle. But I do believe the programme should be extended until the new stuff is ready and proven.

You can see the full presentation [DEAD LINK May 2021] (article via @OpenAerospace on Twitter)

While I mention the Shuttle, you may like the link about to Endeavour’s last launch on YouTube.
(The title to this entry is twisted from an excellent IMAX film on the Space Shuttle).

ActionNotes & Ommwriter Mini-Reviews

ActionNotes

ActionNotes is probably one of the best applications that I have bought for the iPad. It rapidly became a tool that I use regularly at work, providing a simple, yet effective, method to improve my workflow in an area of weakness. Weakness, you say? Do tell...

It's quite simple; I'm bad at keeping a record of meeting and the actions associated with them. I'm even worse at sending the outcome out and sharing it. ActionNotes solves this in one fell swoop by providing a simple note and action tracking tool for meetings. The default page looks like an extract from a book, and bears a strong visual resemblance to Behance's Action Method stationary (albeit not incorporating all elements of their process). You simply type notes into the page, and tap a box beside them to highlight them, and a second box to duplicate the note as a check-boxed action.

Once you have completed the meeting, you can send the notes as a beautifully formatted html email or a PDF via email. Job done. Except for tracking the actions.

Email Example

What's Good?

The simple, direct and quick method to capture points and actions.
The extensive search and action tracking features.

Tracking

Search

What's Bad?
Some stability issues related to longer sets of notes when you add points into the middle of a text (but getting better with each release).

What else is needed?
Bullets, Bold formatting.

Recommended?
Hell, yes! At less than ~£2, a superb package.


Ommwriter for iPad.

I'm sure that I've raved on before about Ommwriter for MacOS X, but now it has a more portable counterpart: Ommwriter for iPad (£2.99 UK App Store). Naturally, I found it very hard to resist purchasing, so here are some first impressions.

What's Good?
The iPad version lifts the look and feel of the Mac application perfectly, with many of the same sound and musical effects that combine to make a focussed writing environment. It's very easy to lose yourself in the words of your text and just write with this app. Coupled with the Apple Bluetooth keyboard it's nearly perfect. However, it is still plain text only, so don't consider this if you want to have italics, bold, underlining, bullets or tables. (There's definitely a gap in the iPad market for an app other than Pages that does this and syncs to Dropbox).

The software keyboard is adjustable both in size and position, which is something that I've never seen before in an iOS app. It looks quite nice and gave me little in the way of problems at the larger size.

What's Bad?
There are a few bugs and quirks that need to be sorted out, the most important of which is that the beautifully designed unique soft keyboard doesn't work properly with the iOS spellchecker or autocorrect. An external bluetooth keyboard does work with them, which is all the more surprising.

The software keyboard doesn't remember its width if you drop into the in-app settings options, which is annoying. It also doesn't give any visual indication if a character will be typed as a capital (the iOS keyboard will let you know if you have deleted an existing capitalised character and are about to type a replacement). You also have to use the software keyboard to type filenames in the settings menus.

Two of the font selection icons are also reversed, but the function is all there.

What Else is Needed?
It'd be nice to be able to resize the text width for the column of writing that you are doing in a similar manner to the OS X application.

The only practical way to share is via email

However, Dropbox integration is the key missing thing in Ommwriter. Even with the small flaws outlined above, it's a superior application. If I could link to a Dropbox folder, and the bugs were fixed, it'd be near-perfect.

Recommended?
I'd give this 4 stars and recommend it for iPad users who like to use their tablet for some creative rising. It doesn't have the features of Pages, but it doesn't need to. However, the lack of Dropbox integration does limit the ease into which it can fit into my workflow.

Gratuitous Pictures

Gratuitous Cute Baby photo to lure you in. Hello from Aidan.

I’ve uploaded a whole load of new pictures to Flickr this weekend ranging from family pictures, to baby pictures, to the last flying Vulcan. Hope you like them. Click the links to get to the Flickr pages.

70th Party Preparation

Nathan Poses for his picture by XH558

XH558 in all her glory in the sunshine

RIP Flip

Photo by van.brussel - http://flic.kr/p/946LfG -(cc)2011 - Hosted on Flickr

I was sad to hear that Cisco had decided to kill the Flip brand and range of camcorders, which still account for over 25% of the US sales for dedicated video recorders. I feel their rational is flawed; they argue the rise of smartphones that shoot HD will kill the product, but I think they miss the point. The Flip is a superb exercise in single purpose design, focussed and honed to give you 2 hours plus of HD recording in a tiny package. Yes, you & I can, and do, use our iPhones (and other smartphones of choice) to shoot video, but I always grab the Flip if I know I’m planning to shoot video. As a device, it changed the way I used video, as it gave me a camcorder I could carry around and use easily and quickly. Ideal for a growing family to catch the kids up to ‘stuff’.

It’s small, good quality and it doesn’t use up the battery on my cellphone. It’s a shame it’s been murdered. I say murdered, as Cisco have refused to entertain the idea of selling the business to anyone else, despite the fact that they are effectively writing off $500m of investment from only a few years ago.

Anyway, you can benefit from this end of an era. Comet and other retailers are reducing and selling of the Flip range. The svelte and superb Mino HD can be had for £72, but the Ultra HD is also worth a look as it will take external batteries as well as the dedicated ones made for it.

Update: Ultimately, I think Cisco were right in the decision, but they could have used the brand as a cash cow for a few more years.

Bittersweet

The Surviving Half Dozen and the MEWP

I've a bittersweet feeling today, arising from the completion of the study elements of my NEBOSH Diploma. Six weeks of classroom teaching and a three hour exam gone, two more three hour exams to follow, plus the ominous 10,000 word dissertation. A full dozen of us started, but we were half that number by the end. Two changed course groups because of illness, one changed to an M.Sc in the same subject, and the rest of the group fell by the wayside.

It's been an intense course, with substantial homework on the study weeks making a balance between home and study hard to achieve. There's also a huge element of learning the specific way that the answers are wanted to be structured in, a technique which differs between the first Unit Exam (Law, in case you were wondering) and the second two Units (practical applications). In short, it's not an easy ride and I'm not surprised at the the numbers who drop out. You've got to want to be there and get the result to enjoy it.

I've made friends, and good professional contacts, for the future, and it felt strange to realise that this is probably the last time we'll all be together except of the exams themselves. It's been great challenging myself academically for the first time in ages, but incredibly tiring as well. I need to keep the focus and motivation together now for the next six weeks, which should see me through the exams themselves.

The Fraud Police

"The Fraud Police" - AFP's Commencement Speech to NEIA's Class of 2011 from Amanda Palmer on Vimeo.

Video of Amanda Palmer giving a speech to recent graduates. Language may be NSFW.

I think everyone fears the Fraud Police, but if you fear them too much then you’ll never achieve what you set out to do.

RIP Sarah Jane

Elisabeth Sladen, who played Sarah-Jane Smith in Doctor Who has died, aged 63, from cancer.

I think the Mitch Benn song above summarises what she brought to the role, both in the original series, the relaunch and the Sarah-Jane Adventures.

RIP

Yes Please.

 

Image from NuclearPowerYesPlease.org (Creative Commons 3.0-BY-NC-SA licence)

Hysteria about a 40 year old design that survived a 70% higher than design basis catastrophe and has yet to produce a significant contamination level does not help stopping global warming. Indecision (and using more fossil fuels) will kill, we cannot afford to delay. Even the BBC couldn’t resist getting hysterical, with anchors talking about a ‘nuclear explosion’ at one point.

Check out the IAEA site for facts on the incident at Fukushima.

The new generation reactors are significantly better in design than the 40 year old BWRs, and another generation may see the introduction of Thorium reactors, which have significant safety and non-proliferation advantages.

Two Kids on the Block

Me and my Tractor John Deere

We went for a walk ‘around the block’ last night at Nathan’s request. Both the Boys did cute very well.

Big Smile for the Camera

Bad, Sad Mac

 

Non-geeks leave now...

IT-wise, it's been a lousy week. I'd upgraded to OS X 10.6.7 when it came out, but decided to leave it a few days before I did a clone back up to make sure that everything was stable. What I hadn't done, which I should have, was to clone the 10.6.6 build immediately before the update. Stupid, I know.

Anyway, I decided to install XCode 4, Apple's development tools for the Mac and iOS devices, because it allows you to enable the iPad as a development device which allows access to the expanded multitouch gesture set. First mistake - I didn't realise that XCode was so big - 4.5 Gb compressed big, expanding threefold when installed - nor that, unlike other apps from the Mac App Store, it needed further installation when it was downloaded. Duly downloaded, it started to install and then hung up. No CPU activity (so not decompressing anything), no HDD activity, and the task manager reporting that it was "not responding". Never a good sign.

Anyway, long and short is that after a couple of ours I restarted the computer, and was immediately faced with a folder icon adorned with a question mark. For those of you that don't speak Mac OS, that means the computer cannot find a valid operating system folder.

I am prepared for this kind of thing; the clone back up allows me to externally boot the computer up, and Time Machine (the built in operating system back up routine) covers the gaps in between. I realised that the clone backup was the previous OS version and more than two weeks old (bad Dom!) so decided to restore from Time Machine, going back to two hours before it all went pear shaped so I'd be reinstalling OS 10.6.7 not 10.6.6. A scramble to find the Snow Leopard install disk followed so I could do this.

However, every Time Machine recovery I tried (four if I remember correctly, at around 6 hours a piece) failed to produce a computer that would boot. The clone worked, but even restoring back a day before failed.

In the end, thanks to a great suggestion by Neil Ford, I reinstalled the cloned back up, updated to 10.6.7, and then restored the user folder using Time Machine. This had one further problem - the 45Gb space I had left wasn't adequate to do a Time Machine restore, so I was deleting individual folders, for example Music and Video, to make sure there was enough space. It was painful, and reminds me why I really need to back up regularly. I've not lost any data, but it was a pain.

The restore did trigger a complication; I had to resync all the photos on the iPad (at 10 Gb for the last 12 months not a quick thing to do as it includes optimisation of the local copy).

Once everything was back to normal, I decided to install the iOS 4.3.1 update that had just been released. The iPad worked fine, but the iPhone update got messy, as iTunes froze during install and lost the USB connection. This bricked the iPhone, requiring a full installation and restore from backup. As I manually manage my music, it was a pain as I had to add everything back in. On the more positive side, I now have 3Gb of space on the iPhone compared the 800Mb I had before.

I'm hoping that everything will be simple and happy from now on, like it usually is.