Snow

Well it's December and we've had the worst snow since I moved here. However could be worse , Scotland have it really bad. Though God knows what will happen when the thaw sets in!!. Worcester's Victorian Christmas Fair didnt seem to suffer too much , though it was very cold.

Still we shall see what the rest of the week brings!!

Sony Capitulation

This post really came about because Mojo carries advertisements for the Brennan Jukebox system , which enables you to have "all your CDs that you never play" in a single box that can be held in one hand , so really it's a sophisticates MP3 hard disc player m, excelpt with graphic or video capability. The Brennan website is here and I thinks it's a worthy but flawed system falling between the stools of convenience and minimalism. The photography and the site are certainly both enticing.


I decided to track the box down , but all Amazon gave me were Sony MP3 (I assume) jukeboxes . The thing that then struck is that most Sony Music Players these days have an iPod dock . iPod is Apple not Sony and it's proprietary (ie not standard). In fact the iPod dock is becoming ubiquitous , with televisions , CD players , cars all having a slot for the damn things. So have Sony given in and have Apple won? It sure looks that way!!

Micro De-Socialising

It seems I've been neglecting the blog of late . Whether this is pure laziness or something else , I'm not sure.

One of the possible reasons is that I can post opinions and links on Facebook and get the things noticed there . though the blog does give me more flexibility.

A worrying (or maybe not) development is the proliferation of personal tracking methods that Apple and Facebook between them have created . It's ironic that people were up in arms about id Cards and invasion of personal privacy under the last (and probably this) government, by use of CCTV and electronic snooping methods , yet are happy to let Facebook / Apple track and publish their every move. If the government really want to keep tabs on people give them an iPhone and a Facebook account and thats the problem solved!!

Oswaldkirk 2010

Amazingly nothing has recently caught my eye , but have used Picassa to keep abreast of holiday photos such as the baleful cat to the right. See the full gallery here

Can You Believe They Put A Man On The Moon?

Always regarded myself as a knowledgeable Pink Floyd fan so was surpised when my friend Mark Johnson asked me if I had a copy of "Moonhead" by them . I assumed it was a bootleg or something but was a commissioned piece for a 1969 broadcast of Omnibus on the BBC. The piece is reminiscent of stuff like "Set The Contols For The Heart Of The Sun" and "Careful With That Axe Eugene" driven by a descending Roger Waters bass riff.

It is amazing how the net allows us access to so much material we thought was lost forever , or in this case we didnt even know it existed!!

Church of Mobile

Walked on to an industrial estate the other day and was greeted by the sight on the right. If JG Ballard were still alive this would be the new religion. The cross , totem , centre of worship replaced by the mobile phone mast , which is taller than a lot of church steeples.

Theres even places to sit so its an open air church of sorts , and how many people do you know who dont have a mobile phone? Theres far more mobile phone users than attend any regulare religious ceremony. And their mobile often dictateds their lifestyle.

Itn the early nineties on mobile phone executive was expecting to maybe hit 20% mobile phone ownership. Today the figure is approximately 130%!! The mobile is ubiquitous.

It started out with voice , with text as an , extra which progressed to data and pictures , and now there fiull blown interenet access and most handsets are fully fledged personal computers.

Telecommunications is an industry than is almost universally beneficial , seldom causing any problems , apart from maybe the siting of some of their masts, but it has musch vaster benefits than bad side effects.

Anyway just people watch and see if your can spot the person who doesnt have a mobile phone!!

Life Isn't Random

The LG Chocolate isa fine enough phone , as a phone . It looks cool , slim and black ,but it also has a music player , and here's the rub: It takes 3 minutes to load the music library !!! I only have 4 Gb of music on the phone and it takes three minutes to load. The phone purportedly takes a 32 Gb card . God knows whatthe reponse would be like with that musch storage.

Once the library is loaded , assuming it doesnt decide to close down the music player, songs are arranged in alphabetical order . Chooses an album and they're in alphabetical order, create your own playlist - it automatically sorts them . What happened to the track numbers and album running orders? Who do they think they are ? Apple?

Need less to to same I'm none too happy with this "feature" . The track number is the first MP3 tag , and this software completely ignores them . The point of playlists is to create and number of songs that play in YOUR order , not alphabetical. No doubt they'll have so eBook software that'll automatically arrange the words in the book in alphabetical order for ease of reading. Unbelievable!!!!