For those of you wondering, there is about 5k GBP worth of flashes here. Oh, and the image has at least three flaws that I managed to spot only when I set it as my wallpaper. 
If you spot more, you can have a pat on the head. I can’t really be bothered to fix them right now.
(Clickly for full*-size)
Having spent nearly a week playing the rather good Forza 2 for the Xbox 360 ( website here: http://forzamotorsport.net/ review here: http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=77491 ) I was really aching to get a car again. Having been cajoled by my parents quite a few years ago to pass the test I did so. Since then I haven’t driven. Every single time that I decided to have a look the insurance was too high. I very nearly got a car sorted last year, but resisted right at the last second. The problem is that at I look at the numbers and the totals that they form are usually in the region of one grand a year on insurance + mot + road tax. Add to that the fact that I’ll be driving a bit of banger and that I also need to pay for petrol and that my actual need for a car is minimal you soon come to the conclusion that a car is just not worth it. No matter how much I enjoy driving.
So yeah. Forza allows me to drive nice cars, some of them are quite clearly not pure race cars but they are just a dream to thrash around a circuit, despite their lackluster power output. It should be noted that Forza 2 is about as close as you can get to driving without being on a road, the original made Gran Tourismo look like a joke, this is hard-core simulation. I hope that you know what camber, toe-in and gear-ratios mean, because you’ll need to in order to win. Forza 2 at some time on Thursday awarded me with a Honda* MR2 Here’s a nice picture:
It has a Border bodykit fitted to it, but anyway. It looks awesome, it has rear-wheel drive, mid-engine, no storage space at all, two seats and is sure to impress all the ladies (until you hit a wall at 120mph). Off we trotted to eBay to see how much such a beast will cost us.
Glory of glory! Such a beast will only cost me 500 quid, ace! Woo, images of having fun on country roads and track-days fill my head, hurrah! And the roof comes off for a nice convertible. Next up, how much is the insurance? A quick* trip to confused.com is in order.
I think I should take a brief detour here in whinging about how hard all of these companies make comparing insurance. confused.com is by far the easiest, it still remembers most of my details from two years ago, so getting a new quote is easy. There are some rather retarded things though. For example, if you just want to see how different cars cost to insure it takes a lot of messing around. And you can only have 4 quotes, before you have to delete one and create another.
After 5 minutes of swearing at the retaded design, we had a quote, it was 2.2k. Wtf? That can’t be right. The car has a 2l engine, doesn’t have that many horsies, so why the price? In short I have no idea. But paying nearly 5 times the price of a car just for insurance is amazingly stupid.
Cue whinging about it to Lewis. Lewis is generally sympathetic, and agrees that cars are indeed silly things. But he did have some ace fun on some scooters when he was in cambodia. Here’s a photo of Lewis* on a scooter:
*lightbulb*
Scooters are clearly much less powerfull, how about having a look how to get one? A quick eBay results in finding out that a piddle Honda Melody will cost me a measly 200 quid or so. Insurance is a stonkingly small 100 quid a year, and road tax 15 quid. Awesome. But what kind of license do I need? Nothing on the internet seems to be much help in telling me. All of it seems to be fairly equally in favour of me needing to do something called Compulsory Basic Training, but what that allows me to do, what I need to do next and so on seems to be very confused. What follows is a very lengthy conversation with Lewis about the awesomeness of scooters. They are clearly the future. They don’t cost much, they run forever on not much fuel, are cheap to insure, and getting a license seems easy. Ace.
The next day at work I use some more free time to figure out what exactly I want. A number of phonecalls seems to indicate that getting a CBT limits me to 125cc, and will cost me 130 quid or so. Still cheap. Oh, and you can do it in a day. So if you really wanted to and could find a place to train you in such a short time, you could be driving a 125cc machine in under 24 hours. Now that I knew what the max engine size limit was, it was time to see what kind of scooter that could get me. It’s not long before I find the Honda NSR 125, it looks a little like this:
(Sorry to whoever’s picture I nicked, if you want me to take it down, let me know)
Look! It looks like a real bike! The ladies will love you! It does a good 90+ mph, 60mpg, hardly ever breaks, costs about 1.2k and 200 quid to insure. Perfect.
So, yeah. That, right there is what I should be riding in the near future. Much more economical than a car, admittedly ever so slightly more dangerous, but a lot more convenient, until it rains. Or you need some storage space. Or realise that you need protective clothing to make sure that you don’t die. It makes sense to me anyway, I’m really looking forward to getting everything sorted so that I can get out on the road.
As a final point, running one of these bikes is cheap, very cheap. So even with massive price hikes in petrol I can still afford to do so. On the other hand they are a minor environmental disaster. Have a look near the end of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-stroke_engine With the interesting claim that 100million of these spew out as much polution as 5 *billion* cars. So well done government, you’ve made running a car so expensive that I’m going to shift to a form of transport that makes you less money yet pumps out more chemicals.
And just for kicks, here are some more Forza 2 photos:
That there is me on the left, coming up to the final lap of a one hour, realtime, race. There is some minor damage to the paintwork as you can see. Forza2 is working its ass off to simulate all the damage that occured to that car, with the physics engine running at 360 updates a second. It really does create a good impression of racing.
That, right there, is a race spec Dodge Viper coming out of the famous blind chicane on Laguna Sec. Racing Spec means that the car doesn’t handle like crap, like all the other American super-cars. Notice the lovely DOF effect going on here.
So the whole Nikon D3 movement appears to be picking up pace. Even cnet running an article about the rumours http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9727472-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
What really worries me is that these rumours appear to all be pointing to a near full-frame body, something which I hope isn’t true. You see, while I don’t have a huge amount of money invested in DX, a single 17-55 lens, it would be a real kick in the balls to be told by Nikon that they’re only going to produce consumer orrintated DX lenses from now on. Nikon have been, in the past, quite supportive of the whole DX thing, coming up with some very good reasons why DX is a good concept, and I agree with them. It lets them build smaller, lighter lenses with more range and less distortion. Compare for example the 17-55 vs the 17-35, that extra bit of length goes a long way. A faired comparison might be the 17-55 vs the 35-70, one of them is a brick, the other one isn’t. All the noise about people having massive collections of old lenses that they want to use is just pointless forum rambling. A lot of the people that want full frame can’t afford it, or will refuse to afford it, because even if Nikon does go full frame it will not do so across its entire product range, the feature will only be there in the top couple of cameras. And by that I don’t mean that the D200 replacement will have it. The advantages that full frame give are tiny in comparison to what DX gives you, whether it gives you better noise performance is highly debateable. I would argue that Canon do better in noise simply by having better sensor technology than Nikon, rather than pixel size.
I don’t think that many pros even want full-frame, what they mostly want is new glass from Nikon, good glass, glass that’s designed for DX and takes advantage that the smaller format gives. And this is something that Nikon has been failing to deliver for a number of years, instead it continues to pump out crappy zoom after crappy zoom. Which further continues the speculation that Nikon is going to make a FF body to take advantage of its old stable of lenses. But even then, I doubt that a lot of people want that glass. Having used some older lenses on the D2x I can honestly say that they really don’t live up to expectation when you throw that image on a 12Mp sensor, they are just old. They are designs from twenty or thirty years ago, before advances in computer calculated optics came in. So Nikon, if they want to seriously stick in the pro market will need to make new lenses anyway.
Where does that leave me then? What I want Nikon to do is annouce the D3 as a DX camera, in which case all is better. That just leaves the question of lenses, something which Nikon really needs to address. If they announce the D3 as anything other than DX then the side of the white lens army is becoming a lot more persuasive, it’s just that I really hate their cameras. Well, not hate, more the complete absense of joy that I receive when I pickup a high-end Nikon body. Something which feels right, where the menus aren’t designs from 1998 and where functions can be accessed with easy button presses rather than press this, then that, then roll the single command dial. I really don’t like that.
To be honest, I don’t really care if the D3 is FF or not. What I care about are lenses. I want some new Pro glass, and I want it yesterday. Canon manage to do it, so why the smeg does Nikon continue to mess around and produce pieces of consumer plastic? Glass is the reason to switch to Canon, not FF, and I really hope that Nikon finally deliver.
In a world-shocking announcement Lewis has managed to recommend a book that is actually readable! Hurrah! Don’t get me wrong, the books that Lewis recommends are probably quite good, but they are quite … specific. Unless you’re into hardcore samurai history or fond of over-descriptive prose then his previous recommendations are probably not for you. This one though, is a little different. For a start, it’s a tiny wisp of a volume, you can easily finish it in a couple of hours. Secondly it’s a collection of short stories. These chronicle the rather ordinary lives of what appear to be rather ordinary people, what makes these to fascinating is that all of these are set against that background of the current commercialisation that is occuring inside China. They wonderfully show you Chinese people almost struggling to deal with this new fangled world that their country is turning into. It’s difficult to claim how accurate any of these are, or how representative, but I think it’s true to say that it’s an excellent collection prose that hopefully helps you to learn a little more about modern China. The writing is concise, sharp and very to the point, it almost feels like every single sentence was placed there with great purpose and with great care, with the narrative ripping allong at such a pace that it’s hard to become bord at all.
As a final note, these stories are wonderfully short. And when I say short, I do mean short, not the standard definition of modern fiction short, which seems to imply that anything under 100k words is fine. These are stories that will fit on a handfull of A4 pages at most and take ten or fifteen minutes to read. They are therefore great for fitting in just before you go to sleep, when you need to catch a bus, or just to chill out for five minutes. My only criticism is that there are no more of them to read, as they run out so quickly.
So there you have it, a Lewis book recommendation that’s ace. You really deserve to do yourself a favour and pickup a copy
Annoyingly, sitting down to watch a film appears to be a harder thing to do than it should be, therefore it’s quite nice when it’s possible to fill a weekend with watching four of them.
First up we have Pirates of the Caribbean 3. http://imdb.com/title/tt0449088/
A simply awesome movie. Contains everything you need, including pirates, fighting, things blowing up and hot girls. I realise that it’s probably mostly aimed at the young teen market, what with being made by disney and having a relatively low age rating, but it’s one of those films that is just as entertaining for the adults. Johnny Depp is once again extremely competent at the role and his character manages to combine not only some fantastic lines but also some wonderfully physical expression. I think that this is a film that not many people could whinge about, yes it’s a bit more of the same, but the attention to detail and the sheer scope of the film means that it’s a very entertaining yarn. You really should see it.
Next up we have Zodiac http://imdb.com/title/tt0443706/
Slightly less everyone’s cup of tea. This is a much more serious film. Much slower in pace and much less exciting, I don’t think that it’s any less fulfilling though. It’s a fairly interesting account of a real murder mystery and it’s nice to see that such films are still made. Ones where crimes aren’t solved with magic technology that can zoom in on a single pixel and resolve a face, but ones where crimes are solved through quite a lot of hard work over many, many years. It’s worth seeing, just be aware that it’s quite long, so I would recommend a cinema with some decent seating. AMC should do you nicely, their seats are lovely, the ones in Odeon made my arse hurt.
Third up we have Popcorn http://imdb.com/title/tt0483776/
Now, this is a little different. Mostly due to it actually being a) a bit poo b) being wonderfully short. I really wouldn’t bother going to see it. In fact it only serves as a demonstration to allow you to calibrate yourself against what truely awful films are like. Ok, so it’s not the worst thing I’ev seen, but it’s not something I would bother watching twice or even consider paying any money for. If you see it in a bargain bin for 99 p in a couple of years time and have two hours to kill and no paint to watch drying it might be worth it. Iit must be said though that the only good thing about this film is the very lovely Jodi Albert, http://imdb.com/name/nm1307799/ , who also takes the lead in the surprisingly good channel 5 drama Respectable, http://imdb.com/title/tt0862615/ That’s much more worthwhile watching than the film.
Last but by no means least we have Renaissance http://imdb.com/title/tt0386741/
A simply gorgeous mashup of film-noir and scifi mumbo-jumbo. The story is a bit over-simplistic, I really want something more convoluted, but it looks nice, the writing is good and it’s very enjoyable. Highly recommended.
About a year ago I had an epiphany, I just don’t need a desktop PC anymore, a laptop would do. In all honesty the epiphany came about two years ago, it’s just that at that point I couldn’t afford a laptop that I wanted, and my otherwise awesome Compaq NC410c was just a little bit underpowered. So I waited. Then, last year, when I finally had some money I ditched the desktop and bought a Dell D620. Now, me being me I ticked just about every box on the options list. So I ended up with a D620, 2.something Ghz Core Duo, with some nVidia card, 1Gb of RAM (upgraded to 2Gb about a month later) and an 85W battery. The battery was alleged to last 8 hours. Obviously it didn’t, it lasted more like 5, but that was fine.
Now, this laptop is my primary machine. I do nearly everything on it, meaning that it stays on nearly 24 hours a day. The only time that it isn’t fully switched on it about an hour each day that it spends on the way to and from work, even then it’s in sleep mode. Obviously laptops are not designed to run for such insane amounts of time. Therefore after 10 months of such abuse the battery now lasts about 20 minutes, with a good tailwind and me setting all the options to power saving. No good to anyone then.
In order to try and get a decent battery life again I decided that I needed a new battery. 30 quid from eBay, ace. Except that the seller appears to be selling it with an official 1 year Dell warranty. A quick google reveals that all Dell batteries have a 1 year warranty, and that during this one year they are not allowed to fall below 50% capacity. A phonecall to Dell then. 5 minutes of basic checks later and the chap agrees that the battery is a bit squiffy. Another two minutes and a replacement is due to arrive at work on Tuesday, sometime between 9 and 5.
So there you have it, a replacement battery for free. I doubt that many other companies would do the same. I should also point out that if I kill the new battery within 12 months of delivery I can get yet another one, and another one after that, and so on. This is in addition to my laptop in general still having over two years of on-site, next-day repair.
I really couldn’t ask for better service from a company.
So, in an attempt to get some hiking practice in and some much needed exercise for my gammy leg, Lewis and I headed off to Derwent reservoir on Saturday. The weather was a bit poor in the morning, but by mid-day it had managed to clear up quite well, and after about an hour drive, over the snake pass, we arrived. It was at around this point that I realised that my camera, and all my camera equipment was completely useless as I had managed to forget the battery at home. Bollocks.
As we set off from the car Lewis managed to remember that he had actually brought some nicer shoes with him, so we returned, having walked all of about 10 meters. So, attempt number two. This time we must have made it a good 50 meters before Lewis realised that he didn’t have his wallet and that most likely it was located on the dashboard of his car. Another trip back to the car then. This was followed by Lewis complaining that he doesn’t have a good feeling about this, I reckon we push on. After a stop-off at the visitors center, and an ice-cream, we finally were on our way. The plan was to not walk the whole thing but a section. There is also a bus that goes along the route around the reservoir so that if we ended up being tired, or my knee couldn’t take it then we could make an easy return. So, with a rather mediocre target of getting to the first dam we set off. It was near enough perfect weather. The sun was out, the birds were singing and there was a nice breeze to keep us cool. We therefore reached the first dam with ease and in very short time. What the hell, we thought, might aswell do the whole thing.
And we did. After a total of about 4 hours we finally arrived back at the car, having walked 10 miles. Cliky here for a map: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=927460
{Editor: I apologise for the quality of the post. It was written at 8 am on a Sunday, while I was unable to get back to sleep, but I thought I might aswell post it}
With all my recent experiences of Bluetooth coming from a PC perspective I’ve generally been quite impressed how the ease of use has improved. Now, I know that Lewis had some issues with his when he was using Vista, but Vista for me has been completely pain-free in terms of Bluetooth. The integrated adaptor in my D620 laptop got picked up without any problems, and the drivers installed. And while XP had some bluetooth support built in it was rather rudimentary and limited to pretty much HID and serial devices. Sending files was a nightmare. There were assorted “stack” replacements for XP which allowed you to get a decent interface and do a lot more, the best by far being the WIDCOMM stack. Mine was a Toshiba one as that is the one that Dell lets you use for free. The problem with all of these is that they had different interfaces on every single one of them. So the WIDCOMM stack looked completely different to the Toshiba stack, which looked completely different to the BluePoint stack. And all of these stacks were a little different to each other in how well they worked. Anyway, this problem was mostly sorted in Vista by the look of it, the included Vista stack “works”, I’m not sure how much of that working is supplied by the downloaded Toshiba driver but as it was completely transparent and pain-free for me to setup I don’t really care. I’ve paired quite a few devices aswell. Looking at my list I have:
Aof which have been a breeze to setup. Therefore bluetooth on the desktop is now easy.
It was with some surprise then that I had so much trouble setting up Bluetooth to get my Pocket PC, running Windows Mobile 5, talking to my newly aquired GPS receiver. An operation which took about 45 minutes while I played with assorted combinations of pairings, services, serial port and port speeds. Not a plug and play experience there. It would be interesting to know how much of this is down to the GPS receiver being a two year old unit. In the end it works, but I wouldn’t call the experience pleasant, and had I been someone with less experience I guess I would have either spent much longer or just given up completely.
Anyway, the whole experience of this torture was to try and get a piece of software called PathAway, http://www.pathaway.com/ , working. I shall leave my assesment for another time, but first impressions are certainly good.
If you head over to your favourite source of all things Top 10 (www.digg.com) today you’re in for a big surprise. This, ladies and gentlemen is why you should think very carefully about bowing to censorship. Especially when your primary userbase are 12 year olds with nothing better to do but post crap on the internet. The official digg blog now has a statement saying they’re not going to take any further action about the HD-DVD posts, but I suspect that the damage is already done. It shall certainly be interesting to see what the aftermath looks like and if digg, one of the darlings of user-generate content, can survive.
Obviously digg is not the only place that’s publishing the number, but are the MPAA going to take down all the YouTube videos? All the posts in all the blogs? All of the forum posts? While the illegality of the number is not really in dispute here, I think it’s fairly obvious that it is illegal, most people simply don’t see it as such. A short string of hex doesn’t quite have as much mental clout as the 200Gb of torrent downloads sat on your hard-disks.
Given that all of these ask pretty much the same questions, and that a lot of these are now online. Why the smeg can’t I just fill the form in once and click submit to 20 different places? It’s a bloody massive waste of time and energy. At the moment it takes something silly like an hour or two to fill in an application. If you ask me there’s something to be said for the old-fashioned method of sending your CV and a cover letter. At least those didn’t take as much effort.