Benj’s blog!

I spent this past weekend in NYC and stopped by the Apple Store to see the iPhone for myself. The place was packed with people waiting to have a go, and at one point, an employee made an announcement to try and shift people from playing to making a purchase. When I finally got to play, to be frank, I was underwhelmed:

• The virtual keyboard. The keys are too small and the lack of tactile response was a big problem. Maybe it’s something I could learn to like, but my initial impressions were that it was awkward.
• The screen is too small for browsing. Having the zoom function is nice, and it’s cute that you can render real websites, but again, it’s just a faff. The experience of zooming in to read text is not what I’m used to.
• Browsing was slow. I checked and the device was using the in-store WiFi, but even so, browsing was painful. As I was navigating through pages I frequently saw the checkerboard.

Apple are a clearly an innovative company, constantly pushing the frontiers of technology. However, I fail to believe that iPhone is the revolutionary device they claim. To me it’s just a phone with a few interesting twists (especially visual voicemail, which is a nice idea).

Jon has some different thoughts at his blog.

As you can see, I’ve decided to give the blog another chance.  I’m currently trying to find a theme that I like. Check back later … that is, if you care …

Apparently there was some snow recently in Nottingham, I wonder how it compares?

2007! Wow who’d have thought it! Wishing you all a year full of good things.

… but at least the snow is here now — cold weather without snow didn’t seem right! It’s around -10 degrees C outside right now! Brrr! However, it stays around freezing during the day, which is bearable!

Well, so much for a post per week; maybe I’ll do a post per fortnight instead. Except that would require I have something to say, and I don’t! Term is almost over here, two homeworks to hand in and then some more to `grade’ (mark for the English amongst you) and it’s all over… with the exception of two exams! Where did the last 4 months go!?

So, my good friend Sam tells me that my use of ™ in my blog subtitle “Another vacuous blog” is bogus! In fact, he claims “ criminal liability does exist for anyone who…suggests that a mark is registered”. That’s under UK trademark law, in the US I’d be OK. But I am British, so I’ll be adjusting it!

Let’s see how long it lasts! I’m installed here in Ithaca (and I’ve been here since August!) Generally, I’m working hard, but this evening I needed a change from studying, so I resurrected the blog!

I’ll see if I can do at least a post-per-week. So that’s all for now

… is full of crap. Who cares which OS Mark Pilgrim uses? Why does it elicit responses from all the of ‘web intelligentsia’?

Someone should delete the entire web and start again. (Parts of this site included )

The only thing you can be sure of is wasting 5 pounds.

Here’s my Airsure story. Going from Nottingham, UK to San Diego, USA.

Item posted on Saturday.
Sits in Post Office until Monday.
Arrives at airport on Tuesday.
Wednesday - still at airport
Thursday - still at airport
Friday - … no prizes for guessing
Saturday - Yep! Still at airport!

What a joke. Hint.

Update
Actually I was a little unfair. The problem with Airsure is the tracking in the destination country. My item was actually delivered within about 10 working days; although, the item was never scanned after leaving the UK. One tip is to use the destination postal service’s tracking system, which often can offer more up to date information. But, don’t (like I did) assume that because it doesn’t show up on the track, that it hasn’t been delivered!

I’ve upgraded to WordPress 1.5 and re-enabled the comment feature. Let’s see how bad comment spam has become!

Not much new to report yet (expect something significant towards the end of May)

From this interview conducted by the Boston Globe with Paco de Lucía:

“Oh, I have no idea what’s next. I think if you want to craft a future full of wonderful things, you have to live the present with all your might,” he says. “That’s the way to do it.”

That’s something I should try to remember. (Definitely worth putting up here!)

And now, thanks to Susy I can see it every day!

The city is much nicer than I remember! It’s clean, and the people are friendly! Tomorrow night I get to see Paco de Lucía play! Now I’ll go find some food and do some “window shopping”! More later!

Yep, nothing interesting happening at the moment, but here’s a picture of a sunset. It was taken this evening after a tip-off from Steve.

Nice, eh?

I’ve bought an Apple iPod, it’s the 40gb model and I’m now in the process of converting my CD collection to 224kbps AAC format via iTunes. Everything about the iPod is beautiful, even the packaging, Apple really know how to do product design and presentation. I decided on an iPod so that I can enjoy more of my CDs without having to carry them around (not really practical for over 500 CDs). iPod means that I can walk, bus, cycle, whatever and have 10000 songs in my pocket!

I haven’t tried hooking it up to my amplifier and I probably won’t bother. AAC is not CD quality. It’s good at some kinds of music — very difficult to tell the difference between CD or AAC — but with some tracks it’s quite obvious it’s a compressed format (i.e. Santana’s guitar on Shaman album). It makes much more sense to enjoy CDs on my little Linn setup (Classik + Tukans). Perhaps if someone released a Wifi hookup so I could control the iPod via the laptop, I’d use it when I’m too lazy to change CD and listen via big speakers …

A photo here

Warning: This is one of those rare journal-style entries!

That’s 3 posts to the blog so far in the last 20 minutes, is that a new record? Johan Norberg dropped me a note in response to my email letting me know that he is “very busy for the moment with journeys and lectures” and that he’ll try to reply by the end of next week. I’ll post it here when it arrives. I had better order his book …

Haven’t mentioned music for a while, I’ve not been listening to a great deal of new stuff recently, mainly Paco de Lucia and Pat Metheny. My flamenco guitar is downstairs in the conservatory and I try to play for an hour or so each morning, listening to Paco play on his live albums is a good reason to want to practice. Talking of guitars, I “treated” my A2 students to some Lee Ritenour and Steve Lukather on DVD, I’m not sure if they were impressed?!

One final piece of news, on the 1st October 2003 (if everything goes to plan!) I start a part-time Ph.D. in the EPRG, under the supervision of Professor David Brailsford, I can’t wait to get started! I’ll write about my area(s) of research next week …

This entry was brought to you with the letters DMB and the album Before These Crowded Streets

I’ve noticed in the logs that (the few) people who read this blog via RSS mainly subscribe to the 0.91 and 1.0 versions of the feed. The 2.0 version is more fully featured (the entire entry is visible from within your aggregator) and so I suggest you subscribe to that. (In NetNewsWire: Find “Benj’s blog” and select Show Info then change RSS to http://www.ijneb.com/blog/index.rss.)

I guess when Pie/Atom/(not)Echo is “finalised” and supported in your aggregators I’ll support that. Then again, RSS sucks …

Sometime ago, large yellow boxes (a.k.a. speed cameras) appeared on University Boulevard in Nottingham. More recently white lines appeared on the road close to the cameras and yesterday I saw a guy fiddling around inside one of the cameras!

Until around Monday last week, if you looked carefully you could see the camera lenses were still covered with the protective plastic covers, these has now been removed!; for the past 6 months or so these things have been dead. So if like me, you’ve were cruising along the boulevard with occasional disregard for the speed limit, safe in the knowledge that the cameras were not active, think again now. In the next few weeks they’ll be turned on and the revenue generation road safety scheme will be active!

(I’m too tired to get into a discussion about how pointless these things are, and even if they aren’t, how badly positioned these ones are in particular!)

As a result of looking around for people’s opinions on the Mac G5 launch, I came across spl’s soapbox. If you have some spare time the articles are worth the read. (although the article on infinity and the universe seems a little pointless!)

Check out spl’s thoughts on the G5.

Decided I would try to tidy up the blog a little. The result is the new style you see now (unless you’re reading via RSS). Let me know what you think …

This evening I made a purchase via the DABS (to replace the HDDs) website and was surprised to see a window popup (and refuse to go away) requiring me to register for yet another pointless customer information gathering system.

I have several issues with the Halifax secure system:
Continue Reading »

“Bring a DVD over”, Steve said to me on MSN earlier, so I did. Expecting him to show me something cool about his new mouse operating a DVD player, off I went. When I walked in to his room I was in shock!

There was a huge great projection panel hanging where his window used to be and he was busy setting up something behind me. Steven must have the “highest technology per square meter index” in Beeston and I suspect it had just gone through the roof!

He’d only gone and bought an LCD projector and wide screen panel! Pat Metheny was on as soon as it was all setup, playing out in DTS and looking great! Later we tried hooking up Steve’s iBook, which was interesting to say the least. Can you imagine coding with a 70″ screen? ;). Steve (Jobs) was next for the iTunes Music Store annoucement (definately a one-time event!). Finally, we watched 1/2 of “The Ring” on DVD, which is still out in the Cinema here!

I don’t think I’ll be going to the Cinema again any time soon, now where did I put my tape measure? I think I could put one where my guitars go at the moment …

This morning I heard on the radio that BT had announced a radical new pricing strucutre. New — yes. Radical — maybe. I doubt it will affect their revenues very much, for the following reason:

Yesterday I spent over an hour chatting to an old friend, I didn’t really mind that I was calling a mobile — I hadn’t spoken to them in ages, it was “good to talk”; I also didn’t really have much idea how much it cost to call a mobile from a land line. At 17.93pence / minute to a mobile, it seems they are making their money from idiots like me who call mobiles from land lines.

So they can make crazy price cuts, and claim to be 20 times cheaper than their competitors, but will anyone really be saving money? How about reducing the cost of calling mobiles? !

Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage

Here’s the info …

… we’ll see ! BBC interception of some official radio of Iran broadcast seems to say so!

(hmm looks like i have to set a title ).

I had a pretty quiet weekend which mainly involved pottering around doing various bits and pieces of stuff(!). I kept promising to visit Dan and show him how to play Age of Mythology, for whatever reason I did not get around to do it.

This morning, after fixing a few things for Buzz, i got my haircut. I think the guy misunderstood and decided to give me a “number 1″ all over but it looks ok. I called in to see Dan on the way home, and subsequently showed him how to lose the various types of AoM battle :).

Gonna pop some new strings on my Flamenco guitar now …

I used to keep a web journal on my old site. The journal was easy to update via some little ASP scripts I had written (back in the day when I thought ASP was great!). Recently I’ve noticed everyone and his dog is keeping a “blog” and so I thought it was about time I got back on the bandwagon.

I had a quick look around and found this package called Movable Type. It’s a whole lot more than I need, but it is based on XHTML 1.0 and CSS. I spent an hour this evening changing the CSS around to make it fit in with the main website (at least for the index page), and voila.

I wonder how often I’ll get around to updating it?