eebahgum!

Letter of rejection

2010-05-14T13:19:00.003+09:30

An inspired piece of writing by John Kador. I only wish I'd thought of it first:

Dear ......,

Thank you for your letter rejecting my application for employment with your firm.

I have received rejections from an unusually large number of well qualified organizations. With such a varied and promising spectrum of rejections from which to select, it is impossible for me to consider them all. After careful deliberation, then, and because a number of firms have found me more unsuitable, I regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your rejection.

Despite your company’s outstanding qualifications and previous experience in rejecting applicants, I find that your rejection does not meet with my requirements at this time. As a result, I will be starting employment with your firm on the first of the month.

Circumstances change and one can never know when new demands for rejection arise. Accordingly, I will keep your letter on file in case my requirements for rejection change.

Please do not regard this letter as a criticism of your qualifications in attempting to refuse me employment. I wish you the best of luck in rejecting future candidates.

Sincerely,

John Kador

It's not lying, it's marketing!

2009-09-26T13:09:00.001+09:30

The Onion comments on Sony--hilarious but with language alert

2009-03-16T10:58:00.007+10:30

The Onion comments on Sony and technology in general. Be warned, there is language in this clip of the sort not usually seen or heard on eebahgum!

See more Technology Videos at Today's Big Thing.

Sony's misleading advertising 2

2009-03-16T10:42:00.004+10:30

Yup, there's more from our friends at Sony. It's the impossibly thin LCD TV which isn't as thin as they say it is. "Be the first to be seen," says Sony, "with the new ZX1". It's as thin as a CD case at 9.9 mm! But wait, there's an asterisk and it goes ... let's see, down to the bottom of the ad ... oh, here it is: "At its slimmest part". So it's not 9.9 mm thin then. My house is 1 brick thick* (at its thinnest part, the bricks that protrude from my window sills). My car is 10 cm high* (*at the front bumper). I don't have a pot belly* (*when lying down).

The picture below clearly show that more than 2/3 of this new TV is not 9.9 mm thick. Sure the LCD panel itself is that thin, due to the clever side rather than back illumination, but you can't just watch an LCD panel. It's got to have those, you know, TV bits and stuff to make a TV--power supply, tuner, etc. Sony have actually made all those things impressively thin, so the whole TV (minus stand or speakers) is actually only abut three times as deep as the screen. Wouldn't it be just as impressive to tell the truth and advertise the set as "an amazing 3 cm thick, and no asterisks required!" But once again, Sony's marketing department chooses to mask the very real cleverness of their R&D people with a downright, dare I say it, LIE! And the media are picking this up as if it were gospel, though most of the reports, even on tech-savvy sites such as gizmodo, uncritically omit the asterisk and accompanying phrase. Shame, shame, shame, as Australian media character Derryn Hinch used to say.

Sony's misleading advertising 1

2009-03-12T12:07:00.003+10:30

The new Sony Bravia LCD TVs boast 200Hz Motionflow technology and claim to have "the smoothest picture ever". Unfortunately, some of the explanations given for the technology are simplistic, or just downright misleading. They show pictures of a footballer with added frames, and have a little video on their website showing a flickbook with lots of frames looking smoother than one with fewer frames. All very convicing, and well, wrong.

The bottom line is the broadcast signal you are watching was only recorded at up to 50 Hz to 60 Hz or fields per second. That's all the information there is. There's nothing between those frames and no amount of post processing by the TV after the event will change that. What the Sony sets (and others) are doing is looking at two of those frames and making up other frames in between them by averaging the two actual frames. They're not real frames, so these sets aren't really giving you 200 Hz, they're just interpolating between the actual frames to smooth the transition that the eye sees.

Now if you look closely at the deepest explanation that Sony gives, you'll see them describe that interpolation process accurately enough. They say "the sharpness of each image frame is boosted by Image Blur Reduction before its contents are analysed and three 'in between' frames are added between it and the next frame. This spreads two frames worth of motion across five frames". So far so good until they conclude "so effectively 50 frames per second becomes 200". No, sorry, that's wrong. These are made up frames. It is not at all the same as a genuine 200 Hz frame rate and neither does it look it.

So even Sony's most detailed explanation has been hijacked by the marketing boys and made into an untruth. But of course, the evils of marketing don't stop there. Most explanations aren't even that detailed, and as the ideas become more and more like sound-bytes, so any attempts at accuracy become the first casualties.

This kind of deception is pretty inexcusable, not only because it's playing fast and loose with the truth but also, and perhaps worse, because it insults the consumer. It attempts to reduce the issue to a 'numbers game' at point of sale and as such it's deliberately aimed at the consumer who doesn't know better. Rather than educate, it's an attempt to befuddle with meaningless numbers, rather like the battle for megapixels in digital cameras.

But the good news is, this technology does actually improve the picture. Sony's new 200Hz-interpolated sets do have the smoothest motion I've seen on an LCD. Is it the smoothest picture ever? No, because a good plasma set still looks better by a reasonable margin to my eye, but these Sonys are the first LCD sets I might be convinced to watch sport on.

Stupid idea of the month—Toshiba laptop keyboards

2009-03-03T17:50:00.003+10:30

I've ranted before about shiny screens on laptops and how unusable they are in many lighting situations. Now Toshiba has tried to go one better in the sheer stupidity stakes by equipping many of its new laptops with highly reflective keyboards.

Putting aside the fact that they look tacky, you can just about guarantee that at least one row of keys will be impossible to read at any give time because of reflections. This won't worry the experienced user who is a good touch typist, but the sort of people likely to buy a shiny bling-ridden laptop are also the users most likely to be hunt-and-peck typists who will be looking at their keyboards. Indeed, Toshiba's top-of-the-line business-oriented machines seem to have matte keys like the good old days.

And I thought laptop design stupidity had reached its limits--congratulations to Toshiba for raising the ante once againI

Google mobile voice search review. Much ado about not very much, but you'll use it anyway

2008-11-26T13:41:00.001+10:30

Judging by the amount of noise on iPhone sites, you'd think that the voice search function in the latest version of Google's iPhone application was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Let me tell you why it isn't.

Do you have voice recognition on your computer? Of so, do you use it to browse the web? For most people the answer is probably "no". Sure the software and hardware exists and is probably even built into your operating system, but most people have come to the conclusion that it's not a good idea.

Ah, but the iPhone is a mobile device, I hear you say! Voice recognition saves all that typing, and is surely much safer in the car. And here you would be right, assuming it worked really well, but in my experience, it only works 'okay' rather than 'really well'. And you'll look an idiot in public talking into your search engine, especially after spending all that time telling everyone how easy it is type on the iPhone virtual keyboard.

As for safety in the car, you still have to unlock the iPhone (one touch), go to the home screen to find the app (two touches), launch the app (three touches), look at the screen long enough to find the small 'Voice Search' button, touch it (four touches), speak, wait, look at the search field to see whether it has recognised your voice correctly, and if not, look at the prompts to touch the screen again and try again. Then you have to read the tiny text in the google page that opens. If my phone is mounted on my car holder, I can't read the text on this screen, nor even see the Voice Search button, so I'd have to hold the phone closer to my face to execute the search and comprehend the results. And bear in mind that voice recognition will work far less well due to background noise in the car.

Bottom line is, there is no way this process could be considered safe in the car, and certainly in South Australia it would (rightly, I think) be illegal.

But how well does the voice recognition even work? I tested a few words and phrases at a distance of about 40 cm and here is a sample of my results:

I said "supermarket". It heard "chicago".
I said "supermarket" in an American accent. It heard correctly.
I said "podiatrist". It heard correctly.
I said "newsagent". It heard "mutations".
I said "newsagent" again. It heard "musicians".
I said "paper shop". It heard correctly.
I said "chemist". It heard "tennis".

I said "drugstore". It heard correctly.
I said "chiropractor". It heard correctly.

I said "pharmacist". It heard correctly.

I said "I feel like a massage" in an American accent. It heard "flexamerica".

I said "where did I put my car keys". It heard "when does my car keys".
I said "where did I put my car keys" in an American accent. It heard "where to put my car keys".

I said "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog". It heard correctly.
I said "google voicemail". It heard "google boise idaho".
I said "shall I compare thee to a summer's day". It heard correctly.

On that evidence the voice recognition works well enough to be entertaining but only moderately useful; it responds better to Americaan accents than my Anglo-Australian, but more than that, it seems to respond better to American vocabulary; and it seems to like Shakespeare.

Is it safe for use in the car? No. Is it all that useful? Not really. Will I use it anyway? Yes, because it's fun. And like so many applications on the iPhone it's an example of clever technology only partially solving a problem no-one had in the first place. And that's kind of cool in a geeky way. Just like the Lightsaber or Zippo Lighter iPhone apps, no-one who actually 'gets' the iPhone should have to ask why.

How to use Google Streetview on the iPhone

2008-11-23T00:12:00.001+10:30

Nice to know we have Street View on Google Maps in the iPhone 2.2 update, but how does one use it? I zoomed around my district unable to see any streets marked with the tell-tale blue which indicates Street View is available, although I know that it is in my area. I then tried my current GPS location, again to no avail. Colour me stupid, but it took my quite a while before I twigged.

The secret is, you need to search for somewhere. Once you do, that location is marked with a red pin, and if Street View is available, the label on that pin will have an icon on the left of a little white man in a red circle. God knows why a man indicates Street View, but ours is not to question why. It will look like this:

Then when you touch the icon for the little red man, you'll be taken to Street View, with your screen rotating accordingly. You'll see your place on the map in the bottom right corner, even indicating your direction of virtual travel, which is pretty cool:

Quick thoughts on iPhone 2.2 firmware update

2008-11-23T00:10:00.000+10:30

I suffer from a disease known as 'early adoption'. Knowing that iPhone firmware 2.2 was due out yesterday I connected my iPhone to iTunes and periodically hit the update button all day until I got a result. Of course, I had read all the rumours beforehand as to what was in it, so there were no surprises. But my first reaction was still one of being underwhelmed.

Let's be frank, for most people there's nothing earth-shattering in this update. None of the major flaws of the phone are addressed. So there's still no multitasking for 3rd party apps, no cut and paste, no decent folder organisation for all your applications, the diary functionality is still pretty poor and the email app still won't open mime attachments. But all of that was to be expected. That said, I am immediately struck by a few improvements that really do make life easier.

The first is the new feature where clicking the home button on any home screen takes you back to the first home screen. This may not seem like much, but I find it a major time saver that also lets me get back to my primary applications without having to look at the screen, a major failing of touchscreen devices as a whole.

Other neat additions include some major changes to the App Store which make it much more usable and in-line with the iTunes version. For example, whereas you could previously only see one screen shot of an app, you can now view and zoom in on all of them. The categories screen now has icons which make navigation easier, and you can break down your view by "Top Free", "Top Paid" and "Release Date" like you can on iTunes. The Updates screen now has an "Update All" button which fixes a major annoyance and time waster. All in all the App Store is a much nicer place to be now.

The mail app has several claimed improvements. The only one I've noticed so far is that wide HTML emails now seem to wrap to the screen better. The claim that "isolated issues with scheduled fetching of email" have been fixed remains to be tested. Since the update my iPhone still does that random thing where it downloads heaps of old email, and forgets the most recent ones. A very annoying bug and I think it hasn't been fixed. Anyone else experiencing this?

There are also claimed improvements to the stability of Safari, and if that's true then they're much needed. I also haven't had a chance to test the new features in Google Maps. Further reports as I play more.

Should we root or 'rowt'?

2008-08-29T10:22:00.001+09:30

When Australians take journeys, they follow routes and they pronounce them 'roots'. It's widely understood that Australian men in particular are always looking for quick ones. Why then do so many Australians insist upon calling their networking devices 'rowters'? Are we really so infantile that we can't pronounce a perfectly decent word correctly without descending into toilet-humour titters? Surely the defence that 'it's just too embarrassing' is a pretty feeble one.

Then there's the oft-heard 'American pronunciation' defence. Interestingly, though, plenty of Americans do in fact use the British pronunciation, and no less authority than Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary gives both pronunciations, but the British one first.

And of course, there is already a device pronounced 'rowter'. It's a woodworking tool, and its etymology is very different. So unless we are planning to carve channels in our networks, can't we just call them 'rooters' and get over it?

Never bond with chickens

2008-08-01T06:57:00.000+09:30

Late last year, junior brought home two chicks that had been incubated as a class experiment, and they grew into chickens in the backyard. They were extremely free-range, wandering the garden by day and sleeping in a tree by night. I started building a coop, but didn't persevere as they seemed content in the treetops and I am naturally poor at finishing things around the home that I start.

One of the chickens, an Ancona, was a capable flyer and displayed mind-boggling intelligence on several occasions, then crowned off the display of intelligence by escaping a few weeks ago never to be seen again. The other, a New Hampshire Red, stayed and, whilst not as bright, was nevertheless a friendly, almost affectionate bird with whom we have been bonding over the last several weeks.

But all that came to an end this morning when I found her brutally decapitated and distributed over the back lawn. Despite my creating sheltered accomodation for her in her tree, she still insisted on sheltering and laying at ground level, and something had found her there overnight and attacked her. Might have been a fox, but more likely a cat. A rather gruesome and depressing sight in itself, but also one that reminded me of the perils of bonding with animals. We're always told of the positive mental health outcomes of pets and animals, but like many people I create very strong attachments to creatures feline or feathered, and find myself inordinately affected by their loss and often guilt-ridden as a result of the things I might have done to prevent that loss.

Over many years of caring for pets, for one doesn't really 'own' them, I have had responsibility for couple of cats, a guinuea pig, a turtle, a rat, several fish and birds aplenty, including budgies, galahs, parakeets, African Grey parrots and a cockatiel. I remember each one fondly, but in each case was deeply impacted upon by their demise/loss/escape. Am I one of that plethora of people who bond with animals to avoid bonding with humans, or was Gandhi right when he said "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated"?

Democracy at work?

2008-07-31T21:40:00.000+09:30

The South Australian Government has just changed its mind about its approach to the aspects of health care for rural issues in response to public sentiment over the issue. It's described in the local rag as "an embarassing backflip", but surely improving policy in response to public opinion is simply effective democracy at work, and governments admitting they may have erred shows a rare humility and self-effacement that should be lauded rather than condemned.

Firefox 3 beta 5 and Scribefire

2008-04-29T16:39:00.003+09:30

As an avowed Firefox fanboy, I've just upgraded to Firefox 3 beta 5 and was surprised to see it smoothly pick up all my add-ons. Of course, it crashed the first several times I started it up, but now a certain calm seems to have descended, and it's working fine.

Some months ago I installed the Scribefire add-on, and although it's been quietly updating away in the background, I've never actually used it in anger until today. So I guess this is a test of whether it works with the Firefox 3 beta. Now I'm going to press the Publish button, and if this appears on eebahgum! then it works. If it doesn't, I'd appreciate your feedback to tell me so. Here goes...

Shame on you APC magazine! (Plasma & LCD wars)

2008-04-17T15:06:00.003+09:30

Something odd is afoot in the world of large format televisions. There seems to be a global attempt move by the media and sales outlets to trumpet the cause of LCDs at the expense of plasma. Never mind the fact that a blind man in a snowstorm can tell that plasma is better at almost everything. Never mind the fact that large LCDs are still more expensive than comparably sized plasmas.

So walk into a major retail outlet and look at how the floor is set up to drive you towards the LCDs. Look at the way the screens are calibrated to minimise the differences between the two, and the store lighting is set to flatter LCDs. Notice the reluctance of shop staff to tell you flat out that plasmas are still generally better at motion, colour, blacks and that resolution is not ultimately important compared to what you see with your eyes.

Look at the media's constant prattling on about LCD 'closing the gap' and becoming the equal of plasma in so many areas. Then think how many years they've been giving us that message. The media is now speculating that Pioneer's recent decision to stop making plasma panels is a sign of their resignation to the victory of LCD in the long run. Nonsense. Although Pioneer has long since made the world's best plasma panels they just can't make them at a realistic cost, and they realise it. Their chief competitor, Panasonic, works to very different economies of scale and has significantly closed the quality gap such that Pioneer screens are simply not competing in the market. Only sensible then, that Pioneer source their screens from Panasonic in return for sharing their technology. It has nothing to do with Pioneer changing its mind about the superiority of plasma in large screens.

So where does Australia's erstwhile APC magazine come into it? Well, this publication, for whom I have always had the utmost respect, has a headline this month which loudly announces "LCDs CATCH PLASMAS" and "SHOCK RESULTS" implying that the LCD panels on test match the plasmas. The trouble is, that is simply not the conclusion of the tests inside the mag. The article in question evaluates 2 plasma and 3 LCD panels and the plasmas come first and second, closely followed by a Sony LCD with the other LCD a distant 4th and 5th. And anyone who has been shopping recently knows that Sony LCDs still cost significantly more than equivalent sized Panasonic plasmas, for example.

So, APC editors, a far more honest cover headline would have been "LCDs STILL TRAIL PLASMAS". Why did you chose to run the misleading one, and are you too part of the global conspiracy against plasma screens?

Laptop crashing? Try this cool trick

2008-01-24T11:30:00.001+10:30

Recently my laptop started crashing at random times, usually when I was in the middle of something critical. Like browsing YouTube videos, playing StickCricket and, oh yes, working. I've always had a theory that laptops were pressure-sensitive, that's to say they are sensitive to the amount of pressure I am under, and more likely to fail when that is high, purely out of spite.

When I started thinking about it I realised that my laptop had once run rather quietly, but now seemed to be a noisy beast with the cooling fan running all the time, and it had become consistently too hot to have on my lap. I hunted down the excellent, if slightly confusing, free application called Notebook Hardware Control, which lets you monitor hard disk and CPU temperatures, and was shocked to find my CPU regularly running in the 90s (Celsius/Centigrade) and peaking as high as 112 degrees before crashing. Being famous for my insight and deductive reasoning, I surmised that this was perhaps less than ideal.

So I took a trip down to my local electronic hobby shop, Dick Smith, and bought myself a can of air, the compressed variety used for cleaning equipment, and sprayed it in every hole and gap I could find. My machine was instantly cured, and is now running in the high 50s and low 60s. It's also far quieter, because the fan is now only one a fraction of the time, rather than all the time as it was. Cost $15, Time 30 seconds, result, dramatic and instant cure.

I'd be willing to bet that most laptop crashes are caused by overheating, and recommend you try this before anything else. The reason it works is that over time, dust, skin and so on build up inside your laptops fan, vents, and in particular, the CPU heatsink. Just make sure you get the right sort of spray, avoiding freeze sprays, or anything that leaves a deposit. And good luck!

Australian Federal Election: John Howard's track record examined

2007-11-23T10:44:00.000+10:30

US readers please note: In Australian politics the 'Liberal' Party are actually centre-right, the equivalent of the UK Conservatives. Go figure!

The long-suffering Australian public, weary of election propaganda, are always granted a few days advertising silence before a Federal election. I’m sure that doesn’t bother the major parties much, as meaningful debate has long-hence descended into the battle of the soundbite, and reductio ad absurdum underlies the core messages on all fronts. I’ve never understood why our politicians, particularly on the Liberal benches, are so convinced that the Australian public are stupid, but their belief is certainly borne out by the Vox Pop at an Adelaide McDonalds this morning:

Bloke 1: Howard’s the best Prime Minister Australia’s ever had.
Bloke 2: Huh?
Bloke 1: I mean, the Labour parties just about unions and shit
Bloke 2: Huh?

Bloke 1 has certainly been paying attention to first core message of the Liberal Party—Unions are bad, and anything associated with them is bad. It’s a simple message which has garnered considerable sympathy for decades. Problem is, it’s such simple-minded nonsense. Unions and almost all those associated with them should be able to stand up proudly in public and defend a magnificent history of standing up for the rights of workers. Like all large organisations, unions occasionally suffer from bureaucracy and corruption, but to suggest that is the norm and the average Australian should be frightened is just a ridiculous and contemptible notion.

The Liberal Party’s other core message is that they have a strong track record on economic management, so why change? This argument would appear to have some merit, if one believed that governments really have that much influence over the economy. But they simply do not. The global economy and market factors have little or anything to do with a national government’s policies, which are nearly always responsive. And interest rates are controlled by the Reserve Bank of Australia, not the government of the day. So the economy is basically a moot issue—there’s almost no credit at all to the government, and the Labour Party’s attacks on interest rate hikes are equally ill-directed, except in their criticism of Prime Minister Howard’s promises. Clearly Howard should not have promised that there would be no such increases as it’s completely out of his control.

And while we’re talking about track records, let’s look at factors outside of the economy—the Tampa affair, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, treatment of refugees, climate change, the list goes on. Economy be damned—these are the important issues that shape our world and define Australia’s place in it. On these issues the Liberal government has been consistent—consistent in its shameful avoidance of truth and compassion and its grovelling to the pathetic neocon agenda of the current US administration. It’s an approach that has endangered Australian troops in an illegal and ill-thought war, has made Australian civilians targets of terrorism, has ill-equipped us to deal with the environmental issues that are critical to our very survival and has led to a general reduction in the respect Australia receives on the world stage, at least outside the US.

It’s a great track record, John. Thanks for reminding us of it, and making Saturday’s decision even easier. All the best in your retirement, and I hope you get a nice cushy diplomatic posting. I hear Afghanistan and Iraq may be available.

Melbourne Cup post mortem

2007-11-06T16:33:00.000+10:30

Well no winners this year. With Maybe Better a late scratching and the unfancied Efficient hit the front just before the post, eebahgum's remaining 5 rated horses wended up 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 8th and 9th. Not a bad result, but a miss is as good as 3200 m, and this was a veritable miss. There's always next year. I hope you did better than I.

Melbourne Cup tips 2007

2007-11-06T09:29:00.000+10:30

Late scratchings: Gallic & The Fuzz

It's Melbourne Cup day again, so here is the obligatory tips posting. Last year, my ratings included the first four horses over the line, a hard act to follow.

It's another tough race this year, not because there's a massive field full of class horses, but rather because we have been spoilt by some real class over the last few years in horses such as Makybe Diva, and there's no-one even approaching that standard this time round.

On top of that, rain in Melbourne over the weekend has softened the track considerably. But the track is now rated dead, and it's fine and breezy in Melbourne today, so it's almost certain the track rating will be good come post-time.

The usual small gaggle of highly fancied, but largely unknown imports completes the puzzle. I always reason that trainers and connections do not waste their time and money flying halfway across the globe if their horse is not a serious contender, but Vintage Crop aside, I have been wrong by virtue of this logic more often than not in the past.

But of one thing we can be reasonably certain, and that is Melbourne Cup winners almost always have good form in their last couple of starts. I don't want to overstate the importance of the Caulfield Cup, Mackinnon Stakes and Saab Quality races, but they do give a pretty fair indication of form, and lead us to the inevitable conclusion that MASTER O'REILLY is the horse to beat in this field. The heavily backed Irish stayer PURPLE MOON may only have finished sixth in the Caulfield, but was coming home impressively and will run the distance. He also has the brilliant Damien Oliver on his back, which is enough to convince me he is a real chance. That riding change comes from his connections not being happy with the 6th place ride in the Caulfield by Kieren McEvoy. They were obviously expecting more.

After those two, last years third placed MAYBE BETTER has claims, as do ZIPPING and SCULPTOR. I've also been impressed by the overseas form of bottom weight MAHLER. Though he hasn't shown much in Australia so far, the news from his trainer this morning is that he has settled over the last few days and is ready to peak, though I am a little concerned that he doesn't have a top jockey aboard, which may be an indication of his trainer's expectations. Expect him to try to lead at some point though.

So in summary:

Likely winner:
MASTER O'REILLY
or PURPLE MOON

In the mix:
MAYBE BETTER
ZIPPING
SCULPTOR
MAHLER

Best long shot:
SCULPTOR which has real form yet is showing $28 on the TAB as I write. Expect it to shorten considerably, but it's great value at the moment.

As always, take the usual disclaimers as read, don't bet anything you can't afford to lose and send me a cut if you win. Happy punting!

Australia's 'Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader' reviewed

2007-09-29T17:17:00.000+09:30

Australian television has recently hit a new low with the first airing of the Oz version of Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader. That the show lacks any form of originality can be seen merely from the title—in Australia, the terms ‘Grade 5’ or ‘Year 5’ are used, rather than the American ‘5th Grader’. Channel 10 is obviously low on talent, so they have stuck Rove McManus into the hosts chair, a man hailed by more eloquent critics than I as “the least funny comedian in Australia’. Indeed, Rove is true to form—he talks a lot and only manages to raise a smile on his own face.

As for the show itself, it’s inane, clichéd nonsense of the highest order. The premise of the title is stupid, as obviously the comparison alluded to is not one of intelligence but knowledge. Even then, the premise turns out to be false, because there is no competition between the Year 5 students and the adult competitors. Rather, the kids are there to assist the adults in winning money—they’re all on the same team.

The questions are ridiculously drawn out, in the style of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and Rove insists upon borrowing from that show’s host, Eddie McGuire, by constantly describing the simple act of answering a simple question as “locking in your answer”. A piece of advice, Rove—if you are the least funny host on Oz TV, Eddie is no funnier, and a whole lot less likable, so perhaps he’s not the best person to be emulating.

The first episode only managed to maintain a semblance of entertainment by virtue of its supporting cast. The kids were generally bright, chirpy, enthusiastic and likable, and the first contestant, Elka was a good looking blonde with a range of quirky facial expressions that were passingly entertaining. And although she was forced to look at the camera at the end of her stint and admit “I’m not smarter than a fifth grader”, she didn’t look very depressed by this admission because she’d just won $100,000 for a few minutes easy work. Assuming that the kids didn’t walk away with the same kitty, then who was the smarter?

Australian Quiz shows are generally pretty pathetic affairs, in which half-literate hosts grin their way through stupid questions fired at largely dumb contestants for huge amounts of money. Even long-running classics like Temptation have got dumber over the years. The ABC’s Spicks an Specks is a lone oasis in the wilderness, but where are the truly cerebral programs like the BBC’s exceptional QI, or the old ABC classic Mastermind, which actually celebrated the intelligence and knowledge of intelligent, knowledgeable people?

Today’s quiz shows on Australian commercial TV are clearly aimed at making couch potatoes at home feel smarter. This one will do that, and may even boost the ego of the family dog, cat or goldfish.

Why isn't 'dipslay' in the dictionary?

2007-09-13T10:23:00.000+09:30

Come now, Messrs Oxford, Webster, Collins et al. Why isn't the word 'dipslay' in your dictionaries? Anyone who has worked as a tech writer would be extremely familiar with this commonly used word. And although it's not to be found in dictionaries, almost everyone would know what it means. I have often used the word in conversation with other tech writer friends, appreciating its clumsy yet beguiling naivety. I'm clearly not the only one, as a quick Google search shows 18,000 occurrences of the word on the web, despite the fact that spell-checkers tend to insidiously target it.

So how can you have a word added to a dictionary? Unfortunately you can't just send it in to Merriam-Webster and have them list it. To quote from their website FAQ:

...the selection of which words to include in the dictionary is not based on personal preferences or popularity-contest-style votes; it is based on usage. Simply put, to gain entry to the dictionary, a word must be widely used in a broad range of professionally written and edited materials over an extended period of time. Any word that has sufficiently widespread use in such publications is eligible for dictionary entry.

On that basis, dipslay is surely a shoe-in. It occurs in a gazillion professionally written and edited manuals, several of them, no doubt, written and edited by me.

So, esteemed fellow travellers in the blogosphere, let's help raise dipslay to its rightful place in the dictionaries by using it as often as possible. Perhaps it can become the first typo officially recognised as a word in its own right, a title it surely deserves more than the much more commonplace but rather vulgar 'teh'.

2007-09-01T22:37:00.000+09:30

If you wanted to play critic, there’d be a lot you could criticise about The Bourne Ultimatum. There’s not really that much story that we weren’t privy to before; several situations are borrowed from the second film, which, coupled with the obligatory and always annoying flashbacks may be a good hook for first-time viewers but falls flat for fans; Bourne repeatedly walks into situations of peril that he could just as easily have walked away from; neither dialogue nor performances will grip you; and there’s still that lingering doubt about that ‘nice young man’ Matt Damon playing a tough guy assassin.

But action flicks are ultimately about suspending disbelief. The most successful of them encourage us into just the right amount of suspension. Too little and we’ll be picking the film to bits before the opening titles have faded. Too much and we’ll have forgotten the experience before the closing credits.

Judging by the looks on the faces of those who watched it with me, The Bourne Ultimatum gets it just right. As the last scene faded no-one was dissecting the plot. Instead they were recovering their breath, laughing in that particular way that indicates a mix of cheer and release, or just forming their lips into the shape “Wow!”

Because when all is said and done, The Bourne Ultimatum is a roller-coaster ride into absurdism, which manages to also keep some hold on reality, or at least that variant of reality that occupies the continuum between our fantasies and paranoias. It’s a frenzy of hand-held camerawork and tight, choppy editing which occasionally pauses long enough so that you can hear the pounding in your temples, before careering headlong into the next sequence. Along the way, we are treated to some scenes that will doubtless become cinematic classics—perhaps the most exciting car chase sequence ever (move over Ronin), and the absolutely gripping early scene in Waterloo Station.

This was undoubtedly the most exciting two hours I have ever spent in a movie theatre, which makes any form of quibbling rather pointless. Instead, I’ll just join my “Wow” along with the others and urge you to see The Bourne Ultimatum. Firstly because it’s fun, and secondly because every future film in the genre will in some way be measured against it.

Harry Potter hilarity!

2007-08-28T13:20:00.000+09:30

My son's friends have discovered this little gem on YouTube, and we've been watching it continually. Little things for little minds, as my dear old Dad used to say!

Paypal’s new logo. What do you think?

2007-08-28T13:10:00.000+09:30

Paypal are in the process of giving their website a new look and feel, and with it comes a new logo. There’s no question the previous one looked a bit old-fashioned, even when it was new. Rather than a complete redesign, Paypal have used the same type and style, just got rid of the outline. I think it’s a little more modern looking, preserving the integrity of the brand, whilst moving it forward a little. It’s hardly earth-shattering, though. And given that tens of thousands of sellers are probably hosting the current logo on their own servers, it will take months or years for the old logo to completely disappear.

I’m in two minds about this one. Is it really worth the effort for so little change? Is it a missed opportunity? Tell me what you think, by way of a comment or through the poll at the top of the right column.

Arsenal takes the Crossbar Challenge

2007-08-22T15:17:00.000+09:30

An entertaining little clip for all Arsenal fans. It gives just a little insight into the players' personalities and the positive spirit within the club.

How I lowered my cholesterol

2007-08-16T23:09:00.000+09:30

I’m not paranoid about cholesterol, but when my GP told me understatedly that my levels were “just beginning to be a cause for concern” I was, well, rather concerned. It is, after all, my goal in life to hang around as long as possible, for my kids, for all those people who haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting me, and perhaps just to annoy those who dislike me.

I’m no medico, so I’m not about to give a primer on cholesterol (you can find a good one here). But the gist of it is that there are two sorts of cholesterol, Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL) which is BAD because it ends up in your bloodstream and can clog your arteries, and High Density Lipoprotein (HDL) which is good for you because it counteracts the LDL cholesterol. Most health authorities agree that your LDL cholesterol should be no higher than 5.5 mmols/litre, and I’d reached 5.6. The GP told me not to panic, as I was reasonably fit, not overweight, not a smoker or heavy drinker, although on the negative side, my father had suffered from diabetes. He advised simply keeping an eye on things, and monitoring my diet more closely.

So I did that. I reduced my fat intake, especially fatty meats, cut out butter in favour of margarine, and cut down fried foods a little. I also increased my aerobic activity and dropped a few pounds. 6 months passed and my next test showed my LDL levels down to 5.3 mmols/litre. Progress, but hardly earth-shattering.

Then I made two more changes to my diet. I started using margarine which had added plant sterols on my morning toast, and I increased my avocado intake to 3 or 4 a week.

Less than three months later I saw an ad in the paper requesting volunteers for a cholesterol study. They specifically wanted fit and otherwise healthy people in their mid 30s with LDL levels of 5 and above, and there was a reasonable financial incentive on offer. I went in for the initial tests, and waited 2 weeks before they rang me with the bad news—I was ineligible for the study because my cholesterol was too low. In three months my LDL was down from 5.3 to 4.3.

Of course, I have no idea which was the more significant, the avocado or the sterol-based margarine. I still have avocado reasonably regularly, but I’ve stuck with the margarine enthusiastically, and of the various brands available I have come to particularly like the taste of the Flora variant with Olive Oil. Several years have passed, and my cholesterol is still well in check.

The usual disclaimers apply—I am not dispensing medical advice, just sharing my experience, and your mileage may vary, so do talk to your GP. And it must be noted that plant sterol margarine is fairly new on the market, so no-one knows what the effects are of consuming it daily for many years. But apart from that faint glow I have at night, so far so good.

The Maltese Falcon revisited

2007-08-14T12:56:00.000+09:30

Yesterday I had the pleasure of taking my son to see The Maltese Falcon on the big screen. I have seen the film at least 4 times before , but was still bristling with excitement beforehand, tinged with just a little trepidation as to how he would cope with ‘film noir’ at the tender age of 10. I’d prepared him by emphasising that it was a dialogue-driven, rather than CGI-driven film, and that it was not in colour. “What, none of it is in colour?” has asked at one point. Er, no, absolutely none. It is film noir et blanc, or at least, various shades of gris, in presentation if not in content.

Although it was late and he was weary, I am glad to report that he liked the film, giving it “less than 4 stars but more than 3 and a half”. On that basis, I think he preferred it to Shrek 3, which we are agreed was pretty awful, with untold money being spent on CGI where a decent writer may have been more useful, but less than Spiderman 3. I guess, in the balance, that should be considered a victory.

I, on the other hand, had expected to be underwhelmed by a film with which I was already so familiar. Instead, I was completely wrapped in every moment of it on the larger screen, drawn into Bogart’s every sneer and smirk, irked by Peter Lorre’s sinister simpering, beguiled by Sydney Greenstreet’s deep, yet threatening reasonableness, and almost seduced by Mary Astor’s beguiling dishonesty. Characters complex, yet without depth, each one almost psychopathic in his or her lack of emotion and sympathy. And with a sympathetic audience around me, the sheer brilliance of the writing seemed compounded. Even out of context the many of the lines seem magical:

BRIGID O’SHAUGHNESSY (MARY ASTOR): He has a wife and three children in England.
SAM SPADE (HUMPHREY BOGART): They usually do, though not always in England.

SAM SPADE: We didn’t exactly believe your story, Miss O’Shaughnessy. We believed your two hundred dollars.
BRIGID O’SHAUGHNESSY: You mean that—
SAM SPADE: I mean, you paid us more than if you’d been telling us the truth, and enough more to make it all right.

SAM SPADE: When you’re slapped, you’ll take it and like it!

KASPER GUTMAN (SYDNEY GREENSTREET): I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking’s something you can’t do judiciously, unless you keep in practice. Now, sir, we’ll talk if you like. I’ll tell you right out, I’m a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk.

KASPER GUTMAN: I distrust a man who says “when”. If he’s got to be careful not to drink too much, it’s because he’s not to be trusted when he does.

KASPER GUTMAN: Well, Wilmer, I’m sorry indeed to lose you, but I want you to know I couldn’t be fonder of you if you were my own son. Well, if you lose a son, it’s possible to get another. There’s only one Maltese Falcon.

SAM SPADE: Yes, angel, I’m going to send you over. But chances are, you’ll get off with life. That means, if you’re a good girl, you’ll be out in twenty years. I’ll be waiting for you. If they hang you, I’ll always remember you.

SAM SPADE: All we’ve got is that maybe you love me and maybe I love you.
BRIGID O’SHAUGHNESSY: You know whether you love me or not.
SAM SPADE: Maybe I do. I’ll have some rotten nights after I’ve sent you over, but that’ll pass.

I looked up Falcon in my Halliwell’s when back home, and found it had 3 Academy Award nominations in 1941, but no wins. Then I remembered that another one of my favourites was released in the same year, Citizen Kane, one of the handful of films which could legitimately lay claim to being the greatest film ever. What bad luck for Falcon, I thought, then discovered that the film that had cleaned up at the 1941 Oscars was, in fact, the now very dated-looking How Green was my Valley.

But The Maltese Falcon has not dated, only matured. And as Hollywood has moved from silent film, to talkies, and somehow back again to a new age of pseudo-silent film through CGI-driven blockbusters which no longer exalt acting or screenwriting, the black bird seems to have been given new wings.

Desperate Australian Government resorts to terrorism card in last-ditch attempt to hold power

2007-07-18T20:58:00.000+09:30

It’s a well-known truism of politics that if the people are unsettled or insecure they tend not to change governments. It has worked for Australia’s Howard Government in the past, when they deliberately played up ludicrous stories of babies being thrown overboard by refugees (whom they’d rather label as illegal immigrants or potential terrorists from the outset), and bought into the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ fiasco. Now, with the polls against them in an election year, they’ve decided to once again try and scare us with the terrorism threat.

For those of you not familiar with the saga let me give my 25-word (-ish) summary. Unexploded bombs discovered in London/associated terrorism suspect found with borrowed SIM card/SIM card traced back to Indian (Muslim) doctor Mohammed Haneef in Queensland hospital/doctor held for some time without details of actual offence being revealed to public, then finally charged with “recklessly providing resources to a terrorist organisation”/Federal Immigration Minister undermines court process by talking a great deal about the case, and whilst revealing no substantive facts regularly hints at secret info he has that makes it clear the man is of unfit character/Magistrate’s Court grants him bail pending hearing, clearly believing that he’s not much of a threat/Minister decides that he will be locked up in immigration detention anyway and his visa suspended until he can be expelled.

Now maybe this fella was up to no good, or at least knew people who were, but there was I labouring under the misapprehension that we had some sort of rule of law in this country. Instead I find the government can overrule that, as well as taking punitive action against someone on the basis of as yet unproven allegations. And whilst this evil-SIM-card-lending-threat-to-all-we-hold-sacred is to be detained and exported, the Australian Wheat Board’s A$300 million bribery scandal in Iraq seemed to pass gently by with no heads being patted, let alone rolled.

The Immigration Minister, Kevin Andrews, suggests that he is "acting in the national interest and about matters that go to national security". But far from making us feel safer, this should make all Australians feel very, very insecure indeed. This is the same government which completely failed to assist its own citizens detained overseas for years on beat-up charges in luxury accommodation in Guantanamo Bay and committed to military action in Iraq on beat-up allegations. ‘Be Alert not Alarmed’, they beseech us, whilst trying their utmost at every turn to terrify the populace by inventing new reds to place under our beds.

The Howard Government's history is already a shameful litany of lies and cover-ups, any one of which should have appalled the Australian people enough to kick them out years ago. And although these things have undoubtedly damaged our international reputation, they’ve generally buoyed the government’s political fortunes at home. But the credulity of the Australian people seems finally to be wearing thin, and I believe, and earnestly hope, that the government’s handling of the Haneef affair will be seen for the politically motivated, self-serving action that it is, and ultimately the final nail this government’s coffin.

Bargain fountain pen from Charles Hubert, Paris

2007-07-17T01:13:00.000+09:30

I've always been a lover of fountain pens, and seem to take greater pride and care in what I write when holding one. Of course, it sometimes bumps into the keyboard when I'm typing, but that's the price I pay. Bad jokes aside (they'll be back later, I'm sure), my increasing computer use over a decade has tended to mean I write less with my hand, and my handwriting tends to reflect. But very few things match the feeling of writing on good paper with a substantial fountain pen. Over the years I've had (and lost) several Parkers and Lamys, and a lovely silver Shaeffer with inlaid gold nib (the best pen I've ever written with—I hope the person who pinched it from the Adelaide Uni games room in the mid 90s has made good use of it).

My current FP is a magnificent titanium-barrelled Cross Townsend, with the top of the line gold Extra Fine point. It's long and weighty, with a mirror-like finish that demands constant polishing. With that XF nib, it's not the smoothest writer ever, and it also tends to leak just a little. But it is a thing of elegance and beauty, which, because of my predilection for losing pens, has only left the house once in the dozen years I've owned it.

Not the most useful day-to-day pen, then. That tasks falls to a stylish red lacquer Parker Sonnet II ball pen (my second, of course) which I like very much, but I've been in a nib and ink mood recently, which has sent me to the web looking for FPs once again.

Following in the tradition of great pens such as Parker and Waterman, which hail from France, I came across a good looking fountain pen on eBay the other day called Charles Hubert, Paris. At the price it was clear that we weren't talking Paris, France, but Paris, China, but in the seller pictures as well as those at isellpens.com the entire range looked very well made. So I spent my $40 Australian plus P&P and acquired this little beastie, its finish reminiscent of the Sterling Silver Parkers, only in turned stainless steel:

It looks pretty well-finished in the pictures, doesn't it? That's because it is. Everything lines up nicely, the chroming is excellent and the cap clicks on and off very nicely at both ends. Clips are often a tell-tale sign of cost cutting, but even this is stylish and neatly finished. The nib, labelled 'Iridium Point Germany' looks good quality, and whilst its thickness is not labelled, I'd call it a Medium point towards the narrower end of that continuum.

In the hand it feels very solid, although the centre of gravity is a little high up the shaft for my liking with cap unposted, more than 8 cm away from the nib out of a barrel length of 12 cm. By contrast, my slightly longer Cross has a lower centre, and therefore just seems to take a fraction less effort to direct across the page. But I'm splitting hairs here, even if the price differential (which is almost ten-fold) were not taken into account. When I first picked up the pen, the black part of the barrel also seemed a little short, so that my fingers were riding up onto the fatter stainless steel section. This was a little uncomfortable, but I've quickly become used to it.

The nib is reasonably stiff and still a little scratchy having only been used for a week, but with the standard un-marked ink cartridge that came with it, it's a nice writer, with good, even inkflow and solid colour. When I get a higher quality cartridge in it things can only improve. And so far there has been no leakage or ink build-up on nib, finger-wrest or inside the cap, a problem which has always quietly afflicted my Cross.

Overall, the pen oozes quality, is fun to write with and I can afford to take it out of the house. At the price it is an absolute bargain, and I suspect the same could be said of others in the range, which I will explore further. Highly recommended!

You can source these pens from my Australian eBay seller, Selectview, who offers good prices and service or at www.isellpens.com.

Deal with eBay negativity using Toolhaus and Firefox

2007-07-10T11:44:00.001+09:30

Following on from my previous post about ebay negatives, let me introduce Toolhaus—my favourite tool as a buyer on eBay. Just type in the name of a seller and it shows all their negative/neutral and withdrawn feedback, uninterrupted by those pesky positives. This, as Bowie would say, is the Nazz!

Just look how it seems to polarise eBayers. Some (most) seem to love it, but you get comments such as “That site is HORRIBLE and a disservice to EBay users. I understand the intention but it is very dangerous and produce (sic) more harm than good”, “I hate that toolhaus thing. Lame. “ and “That site is digusting (sic), what is it, lets find the bad side of sellers and exploit it”. Hey, anything that “digusting” must surely have merit!

And there’s a little plug in for Firefox that makes Toolhaus even easier to use by adding quick access to the tool to your right click menu. Just point at a seller’s eBay id, right click and Bob’s your auntie’s grandmother’s poodle. If you are using Firefox, and of course you are, download it here.

Ebay feedback—reading between the lines

2007-07-10T09:46:00.000+09:30

Newbies to eBay are often misled into putting too much faith in eBay feedback numbers. On the surface 99% seems like a high number, but in reality could be telling a very different story, particularly if the seller is moving high volumes.

So my advice to eBay newbies is to forget about the percentage and look instead at the number of negative/neutral and withdrawn feedbacks and their nature. For example, I came across a seller the other day who had a feedback rating of 98.8% based on 3,500 transactions. This tells me that there were a lot of people who were not impressed, in fact 43 negatives, more than 60 neutrals and dozens of withdrawns. And when I looked through the comments, I noticed significant patterns, falling into the three or four usual groups. People were complaining about slow despatch, receiving the wrong items or items in bad condition, excessive postal charges and items being despatched from Hong Kong though advertised from the UK.

Now, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, and even the most conscientious seller can make honest mistakes from time to time, so I do not expect sellers to have 100% feedback. But when you get the same feedback for the same problems over and over, you are a seller to be avoided. In the case of my example seller, it was clear that he was breaking a number of eBay rules. He was a Hong Kong seller who was pretending to be based in the UK; he was lowering the buy price and padding out the P&P unreasonably, a favourite trick of Hong Kong sellers; and he was selling stock he didn’t actually have. He was also selling some crappy product, but that, alas, is not against eBay rules. Caveat emptor, as always.

Interestingly, this seller’s answer to disgruntled buyers was always to try and discredit the buyer. “Another deadbeat buyer” he would opine repeatedly, or he would defend his excessive padding of P&P by encouraging buyers to look at the overall cost. Of course, that’s not bad advice in itself, but it’s still against eBay rules to sell an item that is clearly worth $300 for $0.99 plus $299 in postage. But his most amusing defence was to say “If this were true... why would we have such good feedback?” Er, I’m looking at your feedback, mate, and all I see is 150 or so very annoyed customers.

Of course, 98.8% of buyers are apparently happy with this seller, who is certainly not an extreme case as eBay sellers go—many are far worse. But even that positive feedback is misleading because most sellers refuse to leave feedback until the buyer has done so. This is, effectively, a form of blackmail. In fact the buyer has fulfilled his contractual obligation in an eBay transaction as soon as payment is received by the seller, and it’s at this point that sellers should leave feedback, as, indeed, a few of them do. Hats off to those people, but eBay should build this into its system and force sellers to leave feedback first, in my opinion.

Ebay has recently introduced the option for buyers to leave detailed feedback on four aspects of a transaction: item description, seller’s communications, speed of posting and postage and packaging cost. Whilst the overall feedback is visible to the seller, this detailed breakdown is not, so you could theoretically avoid a bad seller blackmailing you by leaving positive overall feedback and then very poor detailed feedback. It’s a major improvement, and will work very well if buyers use 4/5 stars as the benchmark for a good transaction and only award the fifth star in exceptional cases. I think ebay is to be commended for this initiative, but I’d still like to see sellers forced to leave feedback as soon as payment is received.

In my experience, the vast majority of the sellers I have dealt with have been honest and remarkably efficient, and I am constantly amazed by how many people seem to live at the Post Office, ready to despatch my orders the nanosecond I press the Buy button. Reading between the lines of eBay feedback will help you identify these people before you buy and avoid the others.

In my next post I’ll point you towards a great tool for analysing negative and neutral feedback. Watch this space :-)

Silly idea of the week: Sony Vaio keyboards

2007-05-02T10:25:00.000+09:30

Sony Vaio notebooks have traditionally been stylish, highly specced machines, but one has to wonder what Sony were thinking with their current keyboard design. All current models seem to have very square keys. They look neat and have a reasonable feel, but they are quite awful to type on. If you’re one of those typists who cleanly hits the middle of the keys each time, then you’ll probably not mind them, but the rest of us will be constantly catching the edges of other keys until the backspace key becomes well worn.

The three most important aspects of a laptop are, to my mind, the things one actually interacts with — screen, keyboard and pointing device. Most trackpads are abominations, the new shiny screens are great to watch movies on (for which you have a TV), but awful for working in almost any kind of lighting, and now Sony are trying to neuter the keyboard as well. Is this progress?

My new Samsung Blackjack has arrived!

2007-05-01T10:50:00.000+09:30

A week ago I took possession of a shiny new Samsung Blackjack on Telstra's NextG network. I love it, and it's the best set of compromises I can find at the moment, but it's far from perfect. My full review will follow in the next few days, as well as extensive tips on what add-on software to try and what cases to use to protect your investment. If you're thinking about investing in a Blackjack, Treo, MotoQ or phone enabled PDA, and let's face it, who isn't, stay tuned!

Escalator Etiquette

2007-05-01T09:58:00.000+09:30

Mahatma Gandhi suggested that you could tell a lot about a society from the way it used escalators. That's a slight paraphrasal—I think his original statement mentioned animals rather that escalators, but the idea, I'm sure you'll agree, remains the same.

By that criteria, my hometown of Adelaide is in a sorry state. Unlike London, or Sydney, or any other major city in the civilised world, people do not stand to one side to allow faster moving traffic clear thoroughfare. Instead, they just stand there like zombies on a day trip to the big smoke. And unlike many cities, there are no helpful signs here to dissuade people from this behaviour.

Surely this is a little thing, I hear you say. You may well be right, but because I have little else to gripe about today, I prefer to see it as emphatic evidence of a far deeper societal malaise. Have these people no manners or common sense? Are they utterly oblivious to the needs of others and to the world about them? Is it selfishness, lack of education, drugs or just simple stupidity?

And is this an Adelaide thing, or does it happen in your city too? Ben Harris at Metroblogging Bangkok bemoans the cummulative time lost in his life waiting for people while they prepare to mount escalators. What is your escalator experience?

No thanks, I already have one

2007-04-07T11:45:00.000+09:30

The premises of an old brothel in Adelaide have recently gone on sale. According to the estate agent, they’re a good buy at around A$2 million. For that you get a small 5-story building with a penthouse flat, swimming pool and spa, not to mention a whole lot of history.

The local paper, that bastion of social conscience and erudite insight, The Advertiser, has a daily Vox Pop in which they asked passers-by whether they would consider buying a former brothel. One of the respondents said that, although she did invest in property, she would not buy this one because she was “looking to diversify her portfolio”. I guess you can only have so many of a good thing.

iRudeness

2007-02-02T10:02:00.000+10:30

Hello, Ned Ludd here.

Almost 20 years ago I remember bumping into a close acquaintance at the university library. We had a brief 'how's uni' conversation, during which time he asked me several questions, and affirmed my responses with the odd "Right", "I see" and "That's great". As we wound up and he turned away I realised by the wire emanating from his left ear that he was wired for sound and probably hadn't heard a single word I said.

That was near the beginning of the portable music revolution, when we revelled in a technology known as the audio cassette, which many of today's mp3meisters have never even seen. Different time, then, but same issues--yet another nail in the coffin of civility and social interaction. Today I lined up at the local supermarket and both the shoppers in front of me were chained to their ipods. The first at least offered some grunt of acknowledgement to the checkout operator, the second was too immersed in the metronomic pounding in his ear drums to even be that gracious. In other public places such as trains and fast-food joints, basic civilities like after yous, pleases and excuse mes are passing into oblivion as increasing numbers of people have their ears shut off to the outside world, and their minds soon follow.

Whilst I am a technology junkie, I cannot understand how this can possibly be seen as progress. Let's catch it whilst it's still a trend and before it becomes normal. Let's reinforce the notion that it is simply rude to be wearing headphones whilst talking to people, and even when in a public situation where incidental conversation might occur. I know that many communications courses teach people to talk less and listen more, but I think they mean 'to each other'!

Tom Baker Says...

2006-12-26T10:13:00.000+10:30

Here's perhaps the silliest site I have come across this silly season.

BT sat down Tom Baker, that greatest of all Dr Whos and now the narrator of Little Britain, in front of a microphone with a dictionary to record phrases. 11,593 of them, to be precise. They're then broken down and reassembled to make other sentences of various sorts, mostly a little rude, sometimes witty, always downright silly.

For a while Tom's voice was actually used by BT as the voice on their text messaging service, but alas, that is no longer. But we still have Tom Baker Says. Check it out:

Tom Baker Says...

Strange thoughts on train

2006-12-25T23:13:00.000+10:30

As one who so enjoys driving, I find my morning train commutes into the city of Adelaide to be journeys of continual revelation. A car, at least for most men, is so much an expression of the self and a buffer against the world that would intrude upon that self. The initial choice of model, colour, accessories; the music or radio shows in which you envelope yourself; even perhaps the routes you chose are, in some small way, about control, self-expression, the ego.

By contrast, trains gently force you to relinquish control, and to interact with the world and others in that curious, usually wordless way that is unique to rail transport. I often reflect on the fact that a train contains a vast collection of untold stories. Its like a massive bookshop containing only new releases by as yet unheard of writers. As you share a journey with these writers you get to know just a little about them by what they read, the way they dress, walk, browse the other passengers and how they converse with their companions. It's like reading the dust covers in the bookshop.

Often you see the same people on a daily basis and suddenly you seem to be in a relationship. I passed a man in the street the other day whom I recognised as a fellow rail traveller. We acknowledged each other shortly but with more than a hint of warmth because we shared a previous connection in a place where we would both otherwise have been disconnected from everyone.

And at the end of the day, these tiny connections are the lifeblood of existence. The hankering for connectedness of any sort is one of the major drivers for most people; the lack of that connectedness the principle cause of sadness.

On the morning journey, staring out of one of the scratched and hazy expanses of Perspex which pass for windows on South Australian trains and listening to Laurie Anderson's 'Big Science' on mp3, I was suddenly a little overwhelmed by this unextraordinary moment and wished my son were there to share it with me. Perhaps that too is inherent in human nature--through connection with others we can turn ordinary experiences into something more. But then it occurred to me that even of he were there, we would not be sharing my experience, but sharing a moment in which we were having different experiences. Those moments in life in which you look at someone else and have a deep sense that your experience or thoughts have genuinely aligned are extremely rare, and beyond price.

Damien Leith wins Australian Idol!

2006-11-26T23:21:00.000+10:30

I've always been a fan of talent shows and for that reason have always been annoyed by Australian Idol. The very premise of the program places 'star quality' ahead of talent as evidenced by the success of such mediocre singers as Shannon Noll (who I'm sure is a very nice chap).

And as the Dean Geyer roadshow rolled on, I feared that Australian Idol 2006 was going the same way. This young man certainly had the package—boyish good looks, sultry eyes, good physique. The trouble was, he was a pretty average singer. The voice was reasonable, but his singing was utterly devoid of emotion. There was nothing behind those eyes even when delivering the most passionate numbers. Yet a few flashes of his six-pack in popular magazines seemed to be enough to propel him towards stardom.

And then something amazing happened which renewed my faltering faith in the Australian public—the viewers voted pretty-boy Dean off the program in favour of the two genuinely talented contestants remaining, Jessica Mauboy, the slightly frumpy Indonesian/Aboriginal schoolgirl from the Northern Territory with the huge voice, deep musical insight and delightful smile and Damien Leith, the shy, buck-toothed Irishman with the soaring falsetto and even deeper musical insight.

And tonight it was Damien who went on, incredibly, to become Australian Idol. I say incredibly, because this unassuming family man really was the most talented person on the program, probably ever, and he is in many ways the antithesis of a superstar. He's average looking, slightly dorky and not exactly cool. And his performances are introspective affairs. He doesn't 'work' an audience so much as carry on an intimate private conversation with a song and invite the audience in. The end result is musicianship of the highest order.

I hang around with lots of classically trained singers (indeed, as the old engineering joke goes, I are one), and I can imagine that in the next few days I'll hear several people criticise Damien's rendering of Puccini's Nessun Dorma. And they'd be right, in part. I personally know a dozen people who could sing that aria better than Damien Leith (although he did it pretty well), but I can guarantee that none of them would be able to make music of Chris Isaak's Wicked Game or Radiohead's Creep. And therein lies Damien's special gift—he seems to have the knack of enabling people to see into the heart of a song, any sort of song, in a way that a pretty-boy with 'star quality' would probably be unable to do. I raise my hat to you, Damien, and wish you all the best. And when you become rich, I'd appreciate it if you paid me back for the 20 calls I made on your behalf to the voting line, but there's no hurry.

Jessica, too, will go far. For one so young she has genuine talent. I hope she stops trying to emulate Whitney Huston and Mariah Carey with their ridiculous warbling and vocal gymnastics, though. Sometimes a songwriter works very hard to select a particular note and the audience deserves to hear it rather than the 257 other notes that Mariah Carey chooses to put in its place.

And as for Dean Geyer, nothing I say will deprive him of success. And I do believe that as he matures he may well learn to sing with the emotion that will make that success deserved.

Melbourne Cup wrap

2006-11-07T21:38:00.000+10:30

> 2007 Melbourne Cup tips may be found here.

What a great race it was. The pace was very easy early on, but from the 1200 m mark they kicked on and the field really spread out. Yeats was ridden very handy and looked well-placed, but seemed to go too early and struggle under the weight. He fought back gamely for 7th. Tawqeet had been a veterinary query before the race and did not figure at all. But the two Japanese horses were fantastic, and Delta Blues held on gamely when he looked like he would be pipped at the post. I commented in my Late Mail that the two were inseparable on form so Delta Blues looked great value. What a tremendous staying performance from both horses, and a finish reminiscent of an immortal Cox Plate from some years ago involving Bonecrusher and Our Waverley Star.

My eight top rated horses included 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 7th—not a bad result.

Melbourne Cup Late Mail

2006-11-07T07:39:00.000+10:30

> 2007 Melbourne Cup tips may be found here.

With Efficient scratched, the big movers in the market are Mandela and Maybe Better, both horses I rated earlier. There's also money going on Pop Rock and I expect him to shorten further nearer the jump. The market seems to have really favoured Pop Rock over Delta Blues, although I suspect there's not that much between them. That makes the lengthening Delta Blues pretty good value, but he likes the going firm.

There have been showers at Flemington this morning, and although probably no more than 1 mm has fallen, that's enough to keep the track rated at Dead at the moment, and even if that rating is modified to Good pre-race, which is a slight possibility, the sting has definitely been taken out of the turf. That is likely to favour UK horses such as Keats and also Geordieland, who has not previously been in my reckoning. Note that Tawqeet and Pop Rock have both had success on slower tracks. as have Zipping, Art Success, Mandela and Maybe Bettter.

With Efficient out of the field there is a lack of pace in the field, and only a few horses who are willing to take a lead and spread out the field. Whilst one might think that would favour the fast horses, who will be able to run ove the top in the final stretch, in reality it means that the field is likely to bunch up out of the gates and hold position for some time and this will cause problems for horses who get back early. Tawqeet, Maybe Better and Pop Rock are all runners who like to sit midfield or further back and may be inconvenienced by the pace. Yeats, Geordieland and Mandela prefer to race handy, so may well be suited.

So my original two tips of Tawqeet and Yeats stand. With Efficient out of the running, I think Pop Rock and Maybe Better might also come into the frame. And I am now putting Geordieland into my reckoning.

To win:
4. Tawqeet
1. Yeats
from 12. Pop Rock and 23. Maybe Better

Also in the mix:

13. Zipping
2. Delta Blues
21. Mandela
5. Geordieland

Melbourne Cup Tips 2006

2006-11-07T00:21:00.000+10:30

> 2007 Melbourne Cup tips may be found here.

The Melbourne Cup is here again, and as usual, I'm nailing my colours to the mast despite the ignominy of having struck out at Flemington last year.

So here are my horses to consider or forget :

YEATS is the top weight for good reason. He is quite simply the best horse in the field. That said, he's not raced at this track, has travelled badly in the past and rumour has it is a little unsettled. Also, the great UK staying races tend to be slower and have much smaller fields. I think if he gets forward early from his good barrier then he will figure at the finish.

TAWQEET is untried at the distance, but ran home very strongly at both the Metropolitan and Caulfield Cup, so should not be a worry. The one to beat.

ZIPPING was poor in the Caulfield then had a good win in the Moonee Valley Gold Cup which suggests he might figure. Also being ridden by Glen Boss who has won the last 3 Melbourne Cups.

ART SUCCESS is perhaps the best longshot in the field. Has won over the distance in the Brisbane Cup on a dead track and came home strongly in the Moonee Valley Gold Cup last week to finish 5th having been 11th at the 400m mark. He was carrying 58 kilos then and only carries 51.5 in the Cup which is a huge advantage. As I write it's showing around 45/1 on the TAB and seems great value.

MANDELA is untried over the distance, but had a solid win in the Geelong Cup over 2400m racing handily all the way. He's 2 kg better off than that run and has very in-form jockey Craig Williams on board which makes him a lightweight chance.

EFFICIENT is also untried over the 3200, but comes off 5 wins in a row and a devestating run in the Victoria Derby at this track on the weekend. He was 10th at the 400m mark and finished the 2500 m race more than 2 lengths clear. He has a taste for victory at the moment and as a 3 year old is surely the sentimental favourite. But bear in mind that the last horse of his age to win the Cup was...well, I forget, but it was a very long time ago and he's carrying weight for age for the first time which may be harsh.

MAYBE BETTER was a late inclusion after his great win in the 2500 m Saab Quality from 8th at the 400 m mark. Question over the distance but likes this track. Was carrying 57 then and is now 7 kg better off, but that has forced a change of rider. Not a big fan of Chris Munce who is the new whip, but the horse has real claims.

POP ROCK and DELTA BLUES are the two Japanese entrants attracting a lot of interest in the market. Both classy animals with good form at home, but we have only the Caulfield Cup to go on here. Pop Rock charged home there for 7th but seemed to have trouble cornering earlier. Delta Blues was trapped very wide and fought on for 3rd. Both have real claims but I'm not sure where to put them in my book. I'll be watching them pre-race and in the markets.

My final tips (which at the time of writing look very much like the market on UniTab):

To win:
4. Tawqeet
24. Efficient
1. Yeats

In the mix:
12. Pop Rock
13. Zipping
2. Delta Blues
23. Maybe Better
21. Mandela

Best long shot: 18. Art Success

Good luck, and as always, I'll take the credit if I'm right and deny all responsibility if wrong!

Arsenal players depend on grass

2006-07-20T09:39:00.000+09:30

First posted on OzArsenal.

It's not something that's talked about much, but the evidence is clear—a number of Arsenal players have a problem with grass. Away from the compact, slick surface of Highbury which so suits our intricate (overly intricate, many of us would say) passing game, our performances last year were often poor and no player was more guilty than our talismanic leader, Monsieur Henry. For years we had to put up with the inconvenience and slight embarrassment of Bergkamp's inability to fly. Now, it seems, TH14 has topped the non-flying Dutchman by becoming unable to play well after travelling on the team bus.

If, God forbid, we were Tottenham, we might have come up with a conspiracy theory by now. Perhaps our North London rivals have fiddled the bus's air-conditioning and a complaint to the FA is in order. But there are probably more logical explanations.

technorati tags:Arsenal, Football

For the media, one of the more seductive theories is that many of our players are delicate prima donnas beguiled by the bright lights of London, who don't like playing with the rougher boys in places they can't find in their Fodor's Guides, like Bolton, for example. And whilst there is some truth in that, I think the real problem is much simpler—we play the purest football in the world, a game dependent on precisely weighted passes and deft touches and utterly confounded by uneven, bobbling, poorly watered pitches. By contrast, teams who like to hoof the ball upfield are not reliant on the pitch and can transfer their football anywhere with equal ugliness.

On top of that, we are a team which relies on pace all over the park, and whilst you'd think we'd play better in larger parks where there is more room to run and get into space, the opposite is true. It's much less work for Henry to run all over Highbury than Stade de France, perhaps one of the reasons he is often close to invisible on the world stage, the recent WC final notwithstanding.

As we head into a new season at a new ground, it is my very strong belief that the biggest variable for us this season will not be Bergie's retirement, the departure of Sol, the possible departure of Cashley or the arrival of the little Mozart. It will be how we adapt to our new, larger playing surface because, I fear, it will be like playing away every week for several months. And the larger crowds may actually be quieter as they'll be in a bigger space and further from the pitch and players. If we settle well at Ashburton Grove, it may lift our away performances. If not, it may relegate our home performances to that level. And remember, our away record last season was the same as Everton, who finished eleventh.

----------------------------

Whatever the players do on the new turf, there'll be no doubt that Arsenal's ground staff will have done their job to the highest level. Head Groundsman Paul Burgess was crowned Groundsman of the Year last year for the second year in a row. That's an honourable tradition at Highbury, where Paul's predecessor, Steve Braddock, also received this award before moving on to supervise the development of Arsenal's training ground.

No expense has been spared to make the Grove pitch once again the best in the world. It's a DD GrassMaster Desso pitch which incorporates a combination of synthetic grass fibres with real grass to create a playing surface with an extremely natural feel. Several other EPL clubs are using this surface, including Liverpool, West Ham and Villa, but Arsenal is the first to combine it with the Stadium Grow Lighting system (SGL) as used by PSV Eindhoven. This system will be used to increase light levels on the pitch, especially in winter where the lights will run virtually 24 hours a day, guaranteeing a summer quality pitch all year round. This system has already been successfully trialled at Highbury last season.

Happy Birthday, Clive

2006-07-18T13:23:00.000+09:30

No, it's not my birthday, but that's less than three months away, so feel free to start saving now. However, there is another Clive on the other side of the world who is celebrating his birthday today. I don't know his surname or anyting else about him, only that on this day last year my friend Sebastian and I were in the Cinque Port town of Sandwich in Kent, and came across this sign attached at the base of another sign:

Purely by accident, I happened to find this picture today and noticed it's exactly a year on. So Happpy Birthday, Clive, whoever and wherever you are!

technorati tags:England, UK

Hastings High Street

2006-05-23T18:40:00.000+09:30

Here's a rather amusing photo I took in Hastings. Click on the image to look at it more closely.

Battle Abbey

2006-04-28T10:11:00.000+09:30

The Battle of Hastings was, interestingly, not fought at the Sussex beachfront town of Hastings at all, but many miles inland at the site of the town now known as Battle. At that sight, William the Conqueror founded a magnificent Abbey in 1070, with the altar stone at the precise point where King Harold fell.

This photo is taken from the lower level of the Monks' Dormitory Range, in the Monk's Common room. A very moving place to visit.

You can find more information at English Heritage's Battle Abbey website.

Review: Apple USB keyboards

2006-04-28T09:37:00.000+09:30

I must admit, I am a bit of a keyboard tragic. I have spent countless hours of my life testing keyboard after keyboard searching in vain for the perfect action. And frankly, I am appalled at most modern keyboards, with their soft, squidgy, imprecise keys.

To my mind, the best keyboards ever made were the old IBM ones which had a lovely tactile 'click' at precisely the point the letter appeared. You had absolute certainty about what you were typing, with audible and tactile feedback. The result? More accurate typing with less fatigue. When they were discontinued I spent my spare time scouring garage sales for second hand ones, with some success.

Alas, there are no keyboards on the market which are that good any more, and others I know share this sentiment. Why is that? Have modern keyboard manufacturers lost touch with what makes a good keyboard, or is the pursuit of low cost and high margin compromising quality?

Never fear. Apple has the answer. In fact, they have two answers, in their wireless and wired USB keyboards, and the good news is that they work with both PCs and Macs, so PC users can also have Apple style.

Make no mistake, these keyboards are pretty. With lovely white keys and compact transparent surround, they are neat, modern and minimalist. But it gets even when you start to type. The action is excellent--soft but decisive. There's enough tactility to be certain of the keystrokes, but very little actual resistance. I sometimes suffer from sore finger joints from typing, but that will be less of a problem now. And like the old IBM 'boards, you can hear these ones, not with that lovely precise IBM click, but a slightly more subdued one, almost as effective. It sounds a little loud when you first start tapping away, but it's a gentle and pleasant when you really start getting into it. It somehow sounds like quality and money :-)

Downsides? Of course, there are some. On the staff machine in the Apple store I could see just how grubby these white keys can get. You'll need to clean them down the track, no question.

Also, these keyboards will not please the 'media' heads who think they need a hundred little silver buttons to control media players, quick launch buttons for every application on their machines, etc. Frankly, I wonder about those sorts of people anyway :-) I used to have a KB like that, but never used any of the other keys, and it took up a vast amount of desk space. Apple have taken away all the keys I don't use and given me back a large chunk of desk. To me, that's a no-brainer.

These 'boards do have keys to raise, lower and mute the volume, and all worked first time on my Acer notebook. You also get a disk eject key, which is, of course, Mac only.

So far all my comments apply equally to Apple's wired and wireless keyboards. Of course there are differences. The wired one has a short cable and two USB ports on the back. It also comes with an extension cable if you need more reach.

The wireless one is Bluetooth, so no cables, but also, unfortunately, no USB ports. Instead it takes batteries and is therefore heavier. It sometimes takes a little while to connect via Bluetooth, and from what I here, you might get really frustrated when batteries start to wear out as strange things happen. But if you know in advance, that shouldn't be too much of an issue. However, the web has plenty of sad Bluetooth stories, so maybe there's a caution in there.

At the end of the day, I think the Apple wired keyboard is better than the wireless. Who really needs wireless on your desk? A short KB cable is hardly a great hardship, and it also gives you two additional USB ports, potentially far less problems, and costs half the money, with no future costs. Either will look cool on your desk.

Shimano bike components are a joke!

2006-02-19T19:51:00.000+10:30

Once upon a time I was a serious cyclist. That was before the fractured kneecap, inflamed plicas, pot belly and so on. And 20 years ago I acquired a couple of top of the line bicycles. My road bike was the bee’s knees—hand built Reynolds 531 SL frame, Campagnolo Super Record Groupset and Suntour Superbe brakes. It was sold to a happy owner long ago. Still in my possession is my time trial bike, a Kettler, handmade in Germany from very early aluminium teardrop tubing and fully equipped with top-of-the-line Shimano aerodynamic gear. Because I used this bike only against the clock I stripped off every unnecessary part, including most of the cogs, so it now has 2 front cogs and a rear cluster of only 3. Low gears not necessary when sprinting or when young.

So after a break of more than a dozen years from cycling I’ve decided to take it up again to accompany my 9 year old on his flash new aluminium framed Giant. And unsurprisingly, there are a few parts on my bike which could use a refresh. Most notably, the rubber brake hoods are withered, the brake cables are rather stiff and the shoes seem to have hardened up. So down to the bike shop I go to get a few replacement parts, only to discover that Shimano stop making them after 5 years or so. The mechanisms may be in perfect working order, but as far as Shimano are concerned, you need to buy new ones. Even the brake shoes are not replaceable any more. That’s great customer support, eh? Compare that with Campagnolo, Italy’s major component manufacturer. I have an old track bike I bought as a novelty item. It’s in lovely condition but is about 50 years old. Even so, spare parts are still available because it’s equipped with Campagnolo Record components.

Problem is, when you walk into a bike shop, almost every bike is equipped with Shimano components. And they look very trendy and beguiling to the unwary, but you won’t catch me buying them again.

And speaking of Bike Shops, I went into Super Elliots in Adelaide today, and was greeted by some of the most arrogant service I have ever seen. I asked about rubber brake lever covers, and the young bloke scoffs at me and says “That bike’s older than I am.” Yes mate, so am I, but I bet both my bike and I work better than you do. He then suggests I just buy replacement levers for $20, and shows me some for $60, so clearly numbers were not his forte either. Then he just looks dismissive and grunts “Just buy a new bike, mate”. I told him about Campagnolo and spare parts, and he went into a great diatribe about how out-of-date they were, and how great Shimano gear is. That must be why top line racing bikes use Campagnolo, then. I can see why bike shops like Shimano though—all their customers have to buy new bikes after 5 or 10 years when all they need is a set of brake shoes or rubber hoods.

So a great big raspberry to Super Elliots and Shimano.

Speeding up Windows—Startup Items

2006-02-01T11:45:00.000+10:30

Any computer running Windows tends to slow down after a while under the weight of accumulated rubbish most of us install. Disk defragmenting and Cleanup tools are provided by Microsoft under Start Menu_All Programs_Accessories_Sytem Tools, and whilst they may not be as good as some commercial alternatives, they're good enough for most of us.

Harder to seek out and destroy are the numerous little startup items that load into the background of your machine. Some of these are essential, but many of them can be useless bloatware, or worse, spyware nasties. It's easy enough to look at what's running by going to Start Menu_Run and typing msconfig to bring up the System Configuration Utility. Under the Startup tab you'll see a long list of items, but how do you tell what you do and don't need?

Some software vendors helpfully give their startup items logical names. The Skype application, for example, is simply called Skype. Others are not so helpful. On my system are a whole raft of Microsoft items with names such as TINTSETP.

Help is at hand, at the marvelous Network Techs website. You can just type the name of the startup item you're not sure about into their search engine and find out what it is, and most importantly, whether you need it. That's definitely one to bookmark.

Review: Acer Ferrari 4005 and 8104. Power and style

2006-01-31T11:37:00.000+10:30

As with most of my reviews, I am not going to give you a run-down of all the features and specs of the Acer Ferrari 4005 and 8104, as that's all available on Acer's website and any number of reviews on Epinions. Instead, I'm going to cut to the chase and tell you what's good and bad about these machines and why you may or may not want one.

First up, bear in mind that the Ferrari 4005 is an Acer Travelmate 8104 in wolf's clothing. They are the same machine, apart from the fact that the Travelmate has a silver exterior and Intel CPU as against the Ferrari's AMD chip and stunning black and red livery with carbon fibre inlays. In addition, Acer have cranked up the clock speed on the Graphics Processing Unit of the Ferrari a little, so it does have marginally quicker video than the 8104. That would be appealing if you are a game player.

As for the AMD v Intel debate, it's mostly stuff and nonsense. Don't believe anyone who tries to make a very strong argument for one over the other. You'll see very little difference in performance. Also, the argument that 64 bit is better because it's the way of the future is also fairly shallow. Very few of your applications are available in 64-bit now, so even with the Ferrari you'll be using 32-bit Windows and 32-bit apps. When Longhorn comes out to replace Windows XP, which may still be more than a year away, you'll still need to upgrade all your applications at considerable expense, and all your drivers, and by the time everything is stable and available under a 64-bit operating system you may well be looking at 3 years down the track. By that time your machine will be 3.5 years old in its technology and you'll be looking to get a newer, faster machine anyway. So it's a non-issue in my book.

Apart from that the 8104 and 4005 are the same. Same excellent build quality, great screen, shape, weight, features and form factor. Same curved keyboard which you may dislike at first but will get used to. Same tendency to run quite warm and have the cooling fan spinning all the time. Same fairly clunky trackpad, which you probably won't use because a mouse is far better--except for that stylish but skippy bluetooth one which Acer ship with the Ferrari--it's a gimmick, and you'll put it away in frustration. In fact, all bluetooth mice I have used are frustrating at the end of the day.

Their inherent similarities mean that both the Ferrari 4005 and Travelmate are great machines. Fast, good graphics, great screens and plenty of power for the reasonable weight. They don't have CrystalBright type screens with their ironically-named 'anti-reflection coatings', which means they are clearly not as good for watching DVDs, although not bad, and clearly vastly better for using as a computer, which is after all, what they are for. I don't get how anyone would think that a shiny screen is an improvement for working on documents and spreadsheets in the differing lighting conditions under which a laptop is often used.

So what are the differences, and why would you choose one over the other or over competing models from other manufacturers? To the last question first--there are not that many competing models. As far as I can tell, Sony, Asus and Toshiba's models in the same price range are less powerful, IBM's are much more expensive, and Dell's heavier. That leaves the likable HP Compaq nx8220 which has better sound and is slightly smaller, but suffers from very poor screen brightness and uneven backlight in the one I've seen--bad enough to instantly take it out of the running.

So it's Acer v Acer up the final straight. The Ferrari wins on looks and sex appeal, but loses a little on the fact that you pay a premium for that. The Travelmate 8100 series gains on the fact that there are now faster models available (2.26 Gig 8106 for example) but loses again on the slightly slower video clock speed.

So it's pretty even coming up to the finish line, until the Ferrari hits its fatal flaw, one that I have not seen mentioned in any other review (though apologies to anyone who has covered it). The keyboard surround/palm rest of the Ferrari is covered in this lovely looking matte rubber finish. Unfortunately, I found it felt absolutely awful under my palms. My hands didn't move easily over it, rather the slightest bit of dust or dirt on the palm rest felt really gritty and I found myself constantly dusting the wretched thing down. I simply could not have seriously considered living with that.

So in the end it's an easy choice. The 8104 won, as it were, 'hands down'! Then I got the bonus prize. When I opened the box in the shop to check the display (always check for dud pixels and keep checking until you get zero. If the shop doesn't like it, go elsewhere) I found that my 8104 had a different finish to every other one in the shop or that I had seen elsewhere. Instead of the plain-Jane silver lid, this one has a metallic, textured, mesh-looking finish which looks like a silver version of the Ferrari. It's still not as stunning as the Ferrari itself, but far better than the usual finish. I think of it as my Aston Martin!

It's been a long time, now I'm coming back home

2006-01-31T11:20:00.000+10:30

So sang The Beatles, back in the day, in that happy-tinged-with-melancholy number 'Wait'.

And it certainly has been a long time between blog posting for me, but I have a good excuse, honest. My UK holiday which turned into temporary relocation came to an end in December, and another relocation was required, back to sunny Adelaide. Since then I've been setting up a new business, home office and life. And now I feel like a little lie down.

I've missed blogging immensely, though — the interaction with readers, with the blogosphere as a whole and above all with myself and the dark recesses of my mind which tend to be explored and illuminated through writing.

So Eebahgum, Happy New Year, Merry Christmas, Live long and prosper and so on to you all, and welcome back to normal trasmission.

Who is the beast? Why, it's a man of the cloth!

2005-10-22T18:05:00.000+09:30

Yes, there's a mysterious 'vege-ravaging' beast rampaging around the UK, and this screen grab from the website of UGC cinemas finally reveals its identity! Look carefully in the bottom left corner and all will be revealed!

I've finally sung at St John's College, Cambridge!

2005-10-15T08:09:00.000+09:30

At a fortnight's notice I was offered the opportunity to sing with the English Arts Chorale in their performance of the Bach B Minor Mass at St John's College, Cambridge last Saturday. Anyone who is familiar with the work will realise that it's one of the hardest sings in the repertoire—long, relentless and tiring. Having not sung it since the early 90s, I was a little sceptical that they'd actually take me at such short notice, but I was encouraged to come along and try out. I had dreamt of singing at Cambridge all my life, so how could I refuse?

So I showed up to the ante-penultimate rehearsal, got some of it right although I fumbled my way through several of the cruel runs at conductor Leslie Olive's cracking tempo. I was pronounced adequate without having to undergo their usual audition ordeal, and it was Cambridge, here we come. At this first rehearsal I was struck by the choir's excellent handling of the rapid bits, and real sense of ensemble and subtlety in the delicate bits. Les encourages everyone to sing the very least they need to create a good tone, and pursues a bright clear 'young' sound, and it works. The choir has a good blend of strong voices and for an amateur choir of 45 or 50 voices is very good indeed.

We arrived at St John's College on Saturday last for the big day. The College is lovely, dating back to the early 16th century. The Chapel, which is world famous for its choir and its acoustic is, surprisingly, much newer, having been built in the 1860s. It is nevertheless a beautiful building, with a magnificent polished floor, lovely roof treatment and austere dark woodwork. There's a Quicktime movie you can scroll around on St John's College website which you might like to check out. The place is long and thin, with the organ mounted above the Quire on the Cantoris side. One look at the place and you can see the sound is going to be nice and detailed in the front half, and a wash of meaningless noise at the back, and that's pretty much how it is.

We had been practicing at my son's school in Reigate, accompanied by piano. The dress rehearsal in this completely different space, now with organ and chamber ensemble was, frankly, a disaster. Suddenly without the percussive authority of the piano, tired from more than two hours travel, and perhaps a little overawed by the occasion, heads went down and timing went out the window. To add to the disaster, the oboist's music was lost, and the tenor soloist was clearly under-rehearsed. This could be ugly.

But as I said earlier, this is a pretty decent choir. With three hours between rehearsal and concert, would we get our heads together in time? Would there be anyone in the audience to care? And most urgently, how was I going to get my fat neck into the tiny bow tie with which I had been provided?

In the end, I need not have worried too much. Joanna fixed the bow tie with the ingenious application of safety pins--a girl thing if ever there were one. The audience was just shy of 250 which in a college chapel is pretty good. The tenor soloist had been working hard between times and was fine. Soloists were very good all round, and the violin, horn, flute and oboe generally excellent—top class players all. And the choir were suitably transformed—they sang well, with reasonable tightness and authority until the inevitable 'wall of tiredness' which affects every choir I've ever heard about two-thirds of the way through the Bach B Minor. After a couple of ensemble wobblies at that point, they recovered to a very musical conclusion. They could have been a little tighter on the day, and perhaps just a little more sophisticated in places, but overall it was pretty good, and in several places, brilliant. And the star of the show was Ian Le Grice, the choir's accompanist, on the organ.

So all told, a very good show. And what a joy it is to sing in that incredibly famous chapel. As wave after wave of audience applause washed over us at the end, I was high on the space and the sound, and just did not want to get off the stage, knowing I may never have this opportunity again—an absolute buzz.

My '6-week' world tour started last Christmas, but somehow didn’t involve any singing until quite recently. Of late I have performed Brahms Requiem with the Surrey Choral Festival, rehearsed Spem in Alium with the Tallis Scholars (yes THE Tallis Scholars), and soon I have another Spem with the highly regarded Exmoor Singers of London in early November, followed by yet another Spem with the English Arts Chorale at Arundel Cathedral, along with the Faure and Brahms Requiems. But in this 500th anniversary of Tallis's birth, every Spem is sacred, every Spem is great!

Earthquakes don't kill...

2005-10-11T09:03:00.000+09:30

Behind the disturbing images currently on our TVs showing the aftermath of the earthquake in Pakistan lies an equally horrible truth which isn't getting much media attention—that most of the deaths could have been prevented.

Earthquake experts have long asserted that earthquakes don't kill, buildings do. And buildings generally don't unless people have messed up.

Although this has been a very significant earthquake, massively destructive because of its closeness to the surface of earth's crust, it would not have caused anything like the carnage had buildings been properly built in conformity with the building codes present in most countries. Bad engineering, non-existent quality control, inadequate government regulation and quite probably systemic corruption have led directly to the death of tens of thousands of innocent people, many of them children. Lack of capital may well be an issue, but the Pakistani government has no difficulty finding the money to play nuclear games or engage in pointless military conflict with India.

Whilst the international community is rallying to provide much-needed assistance, I hope we're also willing to call a spade a spade, so that something positive can come of this disaster.

Gaudi's Barcelona

2005-10-10T09:26:00.000+09:30

In 1987 I bought the Alan Parsons Project CD Gaudi. Despite being from my favourite band of the time, the album was pretty awful, apart from one and a half tracks. But the subject matter, the life and works of the Catalan architect Antonio Gaudi, had me hooked. At the time I promised myself that I would one day get myself to Barcelona to experience some of Gaudi's work first-hand, in particular the magnificent La Sagrada Familia.

Finally, after 18 years, that dream was realised last week, as Jonathan and I spent three whirlwind days in Barcelona. It's a marvellous place, full of wonderful high-class shopping, fascinating markets, and a Mecca for lovers of the Avant Garde and surrealism. And despite the prominent influence of artists such as Picasso, Dali and Miro on Barcelona, and it on them, one figure reigns supreme over the Barcelona skyline and, it seemed to me, the Catalonian mentality—Antonio Gaudi.

I'm not going to go into intimate details of Gaudi's biography (which you can read at Wikipedia here), or a deep meaningful analysis of his work. To me, his structures are more than architecture—they are a weird form of organic art into which you can immerse yourself and somehow feel connected with the transcendent, but your mileage may differ. Certainly, they are all more amazing in actuality than in photographs, but here are a few more anyway. I'll be adding more to this page over the next week or two:

(6 Megapixel images from my Nikon D70 are available on request. More images to come...)

Review: Apple's own iPod killer, the Nano

2005-10-07T04:15:00.000+09:30

Call me a Luddite if you will (okay, okay, stop now) but I never really ‘got’ the Sony Walkman thing. I really love music of every variety (except, of course, country and western), and thoroughly enjoy listening to a very good audio system, so listening to music through scratchy little earbuds with the sounds of the outside world disturbing the rhythm and sanctity didn’t seem all that appealing. Besides, most of the time I actually enjoy interacting with the world outside my head, rather than retreating into the twisted space within.

So Walkmans, Discmans and MiniDisc players came and went, and I remained disinterested. Even the iPod, for all its obvious style, didn’t do much to change my mind. Admittedly, I did take to listening to music on my PDA from time to time, but I wasn’t exactly hooked. I did it simply because I am a gadget freak and I could.

When I added the Orange C500 Smartphone to my gadget arsenal, the first signs of enlightenment quickly followed. At last, here was a device small enough and with good enough battery life to make listening to music on it seem pointful. Besides, it was already with me all the time. Recently I have found myself watching movies and TV programs on it, as well as listening to language learning CDs for my holiday in Barcelona last week.

But the iPod Nano has almost got me convinced. If you haven’t yet seen one, it is very small, if not quite, as Apple claim, ‘impossibly’ so. And it’s absurdly stylish, which will surely be the main motivator for sales. On top of that, it has a number of excellent features such as syncing with Outlook on the PC, a built in stopwatch, and an inbuilt screen lock function that may discourage theft. I’ve blogged before on my view that portable electronics, in particular digital cameras, should have inbuilt security, so it’s good to see Apple doing something on this score.

But the iPod Nano is still far from perfect. Some of my gripes:

It needs a larger capacity than the current 4 Gb if it is to serve a serious photo storage device. Of course, that will come soon enough (as soon as Apple have sold out of full-sized iPods, I imagine)
The headphone socket should be on top of the device. At the bottom it pulls on the connector, requires more trailing cable and looks less cool
An FM Tuner in there would be really nice
It is flawed as a photo viewer—the screen is not really of high enough resolution and the inability to pan or zoom into a photo is a surprising omission
Some people will also feel the lack of Firewire syncing and the absence of a remote control are also issues, though neither of them worries me.

But minor issues aside, there’s no doubt that the Nano is tiny, light and gorgeous and it sounds good to boot. It’s the iPod killer that none of Apple’s competitors have managed to build. I mean, who would want to carry around a huge iPod when they could have a Nano? Does anyone really need to have their entire music collection on hand all the time?

Actually, I don’t need even need to carry 4 Gb of music with me. A 1 Gb card in my phone holds all the music I need, plus all my TomTom maps for my mobile GPS. And I can watch videos, run applications, use it as a powerful alarm clock and make telephone calls, all without needing to carry a second device. That’ll do me just fine until Apple bring out a Windows Smartphone with an iPod Nano’s size, style and functionality. Until then, I can't see the benefit in giving up telephone, GPS navigation, video player etc just to get more music and more cool.

At the end of the day, if the ultimate converged device is the goal, then my Smartphone is closer than the iPod Nano. But my advice is rush out and buy an iPod Nano today. I have a birthday coming up soon, and it would be the perfect gift for a gadget-obsessed guy like me.

McDonalds Spanglish

2005-10-03T06:55:00.000+09:30

With the self-assurance that comes from having listened to Spanish lessons in mp3 files on my phone for 10 minutes a day last week, and having spent a whole day in Barcelona without being lost, pick-pocketed or kidnapped, I sauntered into El McDonaldos and confidently asked for "uno hamburguese ab fromatge por favor". The accent was impeccable, the prounciation perfect, even if I do say so myself—I sounded exactly like an Anglo-Australian tourist mumbling in broken Spanish. It was now that I remembered the problem with learning foreign languages, when the customer service officer replied in a barrage of rapid Spanish, none of which I recognised. Unperturbed and with great self-assurance, I replied, as one does, "Huh?".

I think it's back to those Spanish mp3s for me!

eebahgum's 1st birthday and blogging as a state of mind

2005-10-01T11:18:00.000+09:30

Yesterday was eebahgum's first birthday. After a gestation period of only a few days the birth was reasonably painless thanks to the 'new blogger' and its great default templates. Since then I've changed little, in part because I've tried to focus on content and structure, but if truth be told, also because I've never bothered learning enough about HTML, CSS or any of the other mandatory acronyms. Let's face it, life is short, and my family would rather I spent most of my time talking specifically with them, than more randomly with the blogosphere. At the end of the day, much of my blogging is done, well, at the end of the day, when the rest of the household is asleep.

And it's been a colourful year, with the 'restructuring' of my employment and the surprising demotivation which accompanied it, then my running away from home for a while to new country, new home, new job with the resultant rediscovery of self which has come with it.

Now I've never been one to pour my heart out in print, and thank heavens for that, but just writing about the things which interest, annoy or amuse me is a great motivator for me, because it changes the way I look at the world. I find myself always on the lookout for things which I think might be interesting to write about, but also trying looking at issues in a more critical and objective way. It's one thing to have an opinion, but entirely another thing to have to express it in writing, especially to people who donÂt know you all that well. And the perpetual challenge is to try to put your point of view in such a way that those who disagree with you from the outset might yet be willing to engage with it in some way.

In fact, the very possibility of writing about some things tends to change the way I observe all things. In a way blogging seems to me as much about a state of mind, a way of looking at the world, as it is about what one actually writes—the journey, if you like, as much as the destination—and that too is something to celebrate.

But the most important thing about the blogosphere is that it's other bloggers and blog readers who have planted, watered and nurtured this garden of possibilities in which I have my patch and so it is to you, above all, that I raise my glass today. Live long and prosper!

Link exchange—why it works and why I don’t do it

2005-09-22T00:28:00.000+09:30

One of the secrets to getting more visitors to your blog is having more people link to you. That seems pretty obvious: more links = more traffic through those links. What isn’t quite so obvious is that more links also means more hits through search engines. If Google sees plenty of references to your website when it is spidering, I am led to believe that it will receive a greater weighting, meaning that it will rank higher in searches, and perhaps even be spidered more regularly.

If that’s the case, then exchanging links, either ‘manually’ or using a link exchange tool such as Reciprocal Manager or SolvoLink, would be a great way of boosting your traffic.

But although I would love more visitors, I just can’t bring myself to exchange links. My philosophy is that I should only refer people to sites that I really like or are relevant to the topic in question. Equally, I only expect other people to link to me if they see merit in something I write or in my blog as whole, or if they know I know where they live (just kidding!). So if I link to you, I’d be flattered if you reciprocated, but I neither request nor, indeed, expect it.

Okay, that’s all very altruistic, but how does it sit with my occasional use of BlogExplosion, which is, in a sense, a reciprocal linkage system? Well, I guess I’ll just have to admit to being inconsistent there. I do like to browse blogs, and if I’m going to be doing it anyway, I may as well get some hits from it. And I’ve found quite a few BlogExchangers do actually read, digest and comment, rather than just click mechanically. I see that as something a little different from actively recommending a blog by linking to or blogrolling it. But perhaps that’s just my inner ‘hit junkie’ speaking :-)

Silly idea of the week: Samsung E760 cellphone

2005-09-18T08:14:00.000+09:30

Samsung’s latest mobile, the E760, is certainly a stylish piece of ear candy, but its ‘unique selling proposition’ is the silliest idea I’ve heard this week. To quote from the latest Link catalogue, in order to start the phone’s camera or mp3 player:

“…no need for keys, just shake the phone while holding the hotkey.”

No matter that you’ll look a complete dork standing there shaking your mobile, but you still have to hold down a key! Oh, sorry, it’s not a key, it’s a hotkey. I see the difference.

Another great idea for your portable music player

2005-09-14T23:24:00.000+09:30

In case you haven’t been able to tell from my recent postings, I’ve got headphones on the brain at the moment (though I suppose that’s the usual place for them, in a sense). My last post reviewed a set of retractable ‘phones, but for those who already have a set of favourite ear companions, you can get some of the advantages of retractable ‘phones with this clever little piece of plastic from Sumajin, called the Smartwrap. It’s a stylish cable management device, available in a range of colours to match your entire wardrobe. You could conceivably make something very similar yourself, but for the ultimate style statement, pick up one of these from Sumajin’s website, and while you’re there, get some of their coloured earpads to match.

Review: Boxwave Minibuds 2.5 mm headphones

2005-09-14T08:50:00.000+09:30

Boxwave’s Minibuds are retractable earphones designed for use with portable music players. They’re available in black or silver-white, with either a 3.5 mm or 2.5 mm plug. My previous post bemoaned the problems I’ve had in finding headphones for my smartphone, and the Boxwave is one of very few options available with a 2.5 mm plug.

I weighed up the Proporta and Boxwave options before choosing the latter, swayed by the marketing blurb on Boxwave’s website, user comments on the web and the fact that they have a little clip on the back for attaching to your clothing, which the Proporta ‘phones do not. A dangling cord may be inconvenient, which is the whole point of retracting phones, but a dangling retracting thingy would be downright annoying, I decided.

I ordered the Minibuds from Boxwave’s decent website at a cost of US$23 plus postage, and they arrived from the US to sunny Surrey in about 5 working days, a week before Boxwave’s ETA. Very impressed so far!

As you can see in the picture, they’re quite attractive, although a little fragile looking. The retractor mechanism works well but is not immensely powerful, and a little care is needed to make sure the cables don’t bunch up when retracting. The clothing clip, whilst a great idea, is quite small and a little fiddly to attach in practice. I daresay I will get use to that. Certainly the freedom from trailing cables is wonderful, although best of you can attach the spool midway between your ears and media player. As I usually have my phone on my belt, that’s a problem when, as today, I am wearing a polo shirt, as the only place you can attach the spool is a little too high, so you’re still left with excess cable. Even then, it’s way better than normal earphones in this regard. The earpieces are a little on the large side, and very snug fit in my smallish earholes. I’d rather they were a tad smaller, but I have used larger still and got used to them in the end.

But what about sound? Well, it’s really quite good. There’s plenty of volume compared to the Orange supplied headset, and much better bass response. Earbud-type ‘phones often feel very bass light, but these have quite a flat frequency response. Bass is a little wooden sounding, and naturally not all that extended, but rock music comes across with a fair degree of ‘oomph’ and some real dynamic range. Midrange presence is good and voices, spoken or sung, sound quite realistic. Extreme treble is a little subdued and lacking in the clear sparkling quality of better phones, but very few earbuds ever manage that sort of transparency anyway. All in all, music is presented with energy and enthusiasm, if not the ultimate level of detail.

I wondered what effect the foam earpads were having on sound, so I took them off and was immediately rewarded by a slight improvement in both volume and upper midrange/lower treble. As I’d found the phones a little tight in my ears anyway, this also improved comfort. This makes me wonder if a fine mesh cover over the diaphragm (like some premium earphones) would sound better than the rather solid plastic cover that is there at the moment—something Boxwave might care to look at in future versions.

Pros: Compact and portable; stylish and pretty cool; practical retracting mechanism; solid sound quality.

Cons: A little fragile; treble could be more detailed; better sound may be available for the same money.

Overall: Reasonable sound with extreme practicality makes this a must-have for my Smartphone.

Rating: (4 black puddings)

The 2.5 mm headphone dilemma, and perhaps the best solution

2005-09-13T20:55:00.000+09:30

Smartphones, like my Windows-based Orange C500 or the Palm-based Treo series, make lovely little mp3 players. The sound may not quite be in the iPod league, but they are, after all, telephones, PDAs, video players and a whole lot more besides, so it would be churlish to make too much of that. And to top it off, my Smartphone cost rather less than an iPod.

But one of the areas which holds the Smartphone back as a music player is the manufacturers’ decision to provide 2.5 mm headphone sockets. Like most ‘emerging standards’, this one is nigh on impossible to find at high street retailers, and trust me, you’ll want to upgrade from the standard headsets that come with your phone pretty quickly.

That leaves you with two obvious options. Either settle for a set of ‘phones with a 3.5 mm and use an adaptor, or begin the ‘holy grail’ quest for a 2.5 mm pair. The former path means you have a world of choice, but the size of the adaptors, the degradation in sound quality that they bring and the extra weight hanging off your phone’s fragile 2.5 mm socket may dissuade you.

As for purchasing options, you’ll find the odd combined headphone/microphone for use with phones at some mobile phone shops, but acoustically they’re probably no better than the unit which shipped with your phone. And although there’s no option that I know of from mainstream headphone manufacturers such as Sennheiser, Sony and so on, there are a few retracting cable designs available from specialist manufacturers of PDA and phone accessories such as Proporta and Boxwave. Boxwave’s offering is currently on my review bench and I will blog about it (quite favourably, I anticipate) within the next day.

But there’s one other option which doesn’t seem to get a mention elsewhere—cut off the 3.5 mm plug from a pair of normal headphones or earplugs and solder on a small 2.5 mm plug which you can pick up from your local electronic hobbyist store. It’s not rocket science, and may give you the best of all possible worlds.

An open letter to the Football Association (or my proposal for the England team)

2005-09-08T18:15:00.000+09:30

Dear FA,

I gather from watching England’s performances over the last couple of years, and in particular the last 3 games, that the England coaching position is once again vacant. In last night’s embarrassing performance against Northern Ireland (which division do they play in anyway?), there was a man next to Steve McLaren in the coaching box, who looked like the incumbent coach, but seemed to have no emotional interest in the game at all, and why should he, not being English?

I have good news for the Football Association – I am willing to make myself available for the position, and for my proposed 6 month trial I am willing to accept a greatly reduced salary of only £500,000. I guarantee that under my coaching the team will play more attractive football, forge out better results and basically look more like they have a clue than is presently the case. I recognise that the team has only lost one qualifying game under the previous coach, but that much vaunted statistic is surely no more than you’d expect from such a talented team. More to the point, how many times have narrow victories or weak draws been snatched when a cricket score was expected.

But before I start, I’d like to dispense with one or two items in the current job description, namely the following:

Must be a better ball handler off the pitch than on it
Must be absolutely clueless about footballing tactics
Must encourage hopeful punting of the ball down the length of the field rather than playing to feet
Must use trial matches to experiment with players and formations which will never be seen again, and so use up valuable time the key players could have spent learning to play together
Must constantly play most players in the wrong positions to the benefit of the few
Must have assistant whose name sounds like a piece of hand-baggage
Must show absolutely no passion whatsoever, at least not for football

Instead, I shall concentrate on the basic elements of football, such as defending, passing to feet, teamwork, tackling, attitude, discipline and putting the ball in the back of the net. My teams have always played creatively, with attacking flair and close-marking, physical defence. I have cultivated team spirit, effectively harnessed talent, and dealt incisively with insubordination and poor sportsmanship. I see no reason why this approach, which has worked so well at schoolboy level, should not be perfectly applicable to the current England squad.

I look forward to working with you and my new team.

Sincerely,
Grand Master Eebahgum

'New physics', same old problems

2005-08-26T20:17:00.000+09:30

I caught an interesting docudrama on Thursday night entitled E=mc². It looked at the lives of Einstein, as well as Michael Faraday, Antoine Lavoisier and Emilie du Chatelet, all of whom contributed in some way to the thinking which resulted in the Theory of Relativity. Overall it was quite well done and accessible, even for those whose understanding of the science may not have been great.

What I'd like to take issue with is the oft-repeated contention that the world was changed forever by the Theory of Relativity. It's a lovely romantic notion, and indeed, it should be true. But then I look at the recent London bombings, the riots in Gaza, the awful state of scientific education in wealthy countries such as the USA and the massive influence of fundamentalism around the world, and I realise it's bunkum. Of course, the cumulative knowledge of the human race is greater than ever, as is the number of people who have access to formal education. There is more opportunity to acquire education, at least in most countries, than at any previous point in history. Yet precisely the systems, media and communications technologies which could be used to eliminate the ignorance which breeds hatred and violence have instead been hijacked to propagate various forms of ignorance. When once ignorance was diffused and belonged to individuals, it has become systemic and belongs to groups. And because these groups are self-encouraging, and in many cases defined by their opposition to mainstream thought, this is a form of ignorance far more dangerous and harder to combat.

And there can be little doubt that the worst perpetrators of this form of institutionalised ignorance are fundamentalist religious groups. Whilst extremist Islam obviously comes to mind, fundamentalist Christianity has been at least as successful at convincing its followers to disengage with modern science and thought, whilst enjoying all the trappings of modern medicine and technology which that science has brought them.

Those of us who believe that ignorance is the root of all evil and that the world can be made a better place through education have, frankly, been caught with our textbooks down. We have allowed religious groups, and every form of ‘-ism’ to hijack the public discourse, and we have allowed our governments to relax on their educational agenda. Meanwhile the agents of misinformation have not been nearly as apathetic. Lest we forget what the consequences of such complacency can be we need look only at Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia and Pol Pot’s Cambodia.

So has Einstein changed the world? Has the equivalence of energy and matter changed the world in any visible way apart from through nuclear bombs and the Cold War? In today’s world at least a third of the population live under what I might view as repressive regimes. Large sections of the African and Asian population do not have access to basic education. In the Middle-East, Pakistan, the US and other countries, hundreds of millions are in the grip of the anti-intellectual thought which comes with fundamentalist religion.

I could go on, but I’m starting to depress myself. Perhaps more important than despairing about the current situation is asking, “Where to from here?” Is there anything in my naive assertion that education and compassion really can improve the world, or is entropy inevitable, even in social systems? What do you think?

My cell phone is a word processor

2005-08-24T07:26:00.000+09:30

Hard to believe perhaps, but this article is being written entirely on my Windows Smartphone. Not, I hasten to add, on the little abc keyboard or even using T9 word recognition. No, this was typed on my Dell Bluetooth keyboard using a lovely little freeware text editor called Orneta Notepad. And the good news is that it all works rather well—a very practical solution for the mobile writer.

That shouldn't come as such a surprise. My Orange SPV C500 may be small, but it packs in a 200 MHz processor and a bright 176x200 screen. And the operating system is not all that different from the version of Windows that runs on my PDA. Problem is Microsoft don't even ship a simple text editor with Windows Mobile 2003 for Smartphones, which is a damned shame, because I have to tell you, this is extremely good fun! Also, if I could afford the telephony costs, I'd be able to upload this article to my blog directly from my phone.

On top of that, the phone makes a pretty neat mp3 player (although decent 2.5 mm plug headphones are pretty hard to come by), a cute video player, aided by the excellent sound from the on-board speaker, and a tremendous portable navigation system when coupled with my Bluetooth GPS and TomTom Mobile 5 software. Although I prefer the larger screen of the PDA for in-car SatNav, on the phone I get 7.5 hours battery life or more, compared to the PDA's 3 and a bit. That was enough for a full dayÂs walking in London last weekend.

As well as that it does all the usual stuff like sync with my Outlook calendar and tasks and make phone calls. On that last point alone it is the best-featured, best sounding...simply the best mobile I have ever used. Throw in all the other features, tried or simply imagined, and you have a little miracle.

Aston Martin at Le Mans

2005-06-19T08:39:00.000+09:30

Frustrating not to be able to watch the Le Mans race on television, but I am closely watching the lap times at the official Le Mans website. As I write, the race is 9 hours gone, and an Aston Martin DBR9 has led the GT1 class for several hours, and has just moved up to 6th overall. The only cars in front of it now are the much more powerful LM1 cars, and even the LM2 cars are all training the GT1 cars. A quite amazing performance so far from the Astons and Corvettes.

The second Aston was hit by a couple of stop-go penalties early on and has clawed its way back into 4th in the class and 12th overall. It will struggle to catch the Corvettes from there, but Australian David Brabham is a very fine pilot like his father before him, and his car certainly fast, so if it survives the journey anything is possible.

Somehow 'watching' the race over the internet from Southern England, just knowing I am only one country away, is much more exciting than doing so from Australia. Viens les Astons!

Save me from Dell screen protectors!

2005-06-18T01:50:00.000+09:30

There's not all that much point in using screen protectors on your shiny new PDA if they make the screen much less usable and have to be replaced so often that you risk damaging your screen in the process.

So it is with the pathetic Dell-branded offerings I purchased with my Axim X50v. They are hard to get on without bubbles and dust being trapped underneath, and they scratch up horribly from the first stroke of the stylus. Six days the first one lasted before I was turning up my screen brightness to avoid looking at the horrible scratches.

What I and all other PDA users need is hard, non-sticky protectors which last a very long time. Such beasts do exist, for example, the highly regarded ClearTouch Crystal from Boxwave. I can't seem to find them in the UK, though, so it's on-line I must go. I'll report back as soon as I've tested them out.

On Ashley Cole and Chelski

2005-06-18T01:44:00.000+09:30

The face of football is about to be changed for ever. The name Bosman has already become ingrained into the annals of football history, and Arsenal fullback Ashley Cole's name may be about to join it. He's been fined £100,000 for meeting with Chelsea officals without them clearing such a meeting with Arsenal. No doubt Chelsea have acted illegally and unethically and deserve their punishment (£300,000 for club and £200,000 for Jose Mourinho, the Manager). But what about Ashley Cole? In almost any other walk of life one is free to explore employment possibilities without fear of censure. Indeed, one's right to do so is protected by law. Football's ruling bodies, though, forbid in their sport what is a fundamental entitlement in normal life. One could argue that this is a long way from normal life—that the amount of money alone makes it a surreal world in which other rules need to apply. Perhaps, but it still looks like restraint of trade to me. And if Bosman taught us anything, it was that in the new Europe football will struggle to remain a law unto itself.

So Ashley Cole is appealing his sentence. He may or may not win that appeal, but whatever the outcome in the short term, the worms are out of the can. In the long term football may be the winner. That remains to be seen. In the shorter term Cole may well leave Arsenal, feeling the club has been unsupportive. That will be bad for the club, and probably for Cole who has come through the club's youth system and blossomed under Arsene Wenger. He will not benefit from the distraction of the court case, nor from the reputation he is likely to gain as a result.

In fact, the only short term winner will be Chelsea. They will not gain Cole's services, but they were hardly defensively weak to start with. What they have succeeded in doing is loosening a key defender from their main rivals, which only makes Chelsea comparatively stronger. £500,000 in fines may have been a cheap price to pay for that advantage.

Reflections on Fleet Street and Aston Martin

2005-06-17T02:04:00.000+09:30

The name Fleet Street is so evocative of the newspapers, good and bad, that many visitors to London are confused when they can find little or no journalism actually going on there. You might argue that in the corridors of The Sun or The Daily Mirror it was ever thus, but Fleet Street is now no more than a collection of journalism’s ghosts. Major papers have been moving away for three decades, and that exodus was just about completed this week when Reuters vacated the area after 66 years. That leaves only one newspaper publisher, D C Thomson, best known for those esteemed literary periodicals The Dandy and Beano, to which I owe much of my development.

If great names have been performing something of an ereptation from Fleet Street, one of motoring’s greatest names is making a return to hallowed ground this weekend. Aston Martin, eebahgum’s favourite carmaker, is returning to Le Mans, where it was last sighted in 1959. Aston Martin DBR1s came first and second on that day and Aston will be hoping history is repeated with the DBR9 to support its ambitious plan of more than doubling production this year to 5,000 vehicles. Not that demand has been much of an issue lately for Ford’s most prestigious marque. The current waiting list for a new Aston is more than 18 months. I guess that gives me some time to save.

My new toy: A Dell Axim X50V

2005-06-05T09:52:00.000+09:30

After extensive market research over several months, a new family member has joined the eebahgum clan. It's a shiny new Dell X50V Pocket PC with the top spec and a bluetooth keyboard. First impressions are... it's cool, useful and well built, but rather disappointing for battery life. Doubtless every intricate detail will follow soon :-)

eebahgum, I be a winner!

2005-05-29T18:49:00.000+09:30

For someone who is completely unsuperstitious, perhaps downright sceptical, I've had my fair share of luck in life. I haven't won the lottery (no doubt because I never enter them), but I've garnered several door prizes, a few radio quizes and am well ahead on the nags.

But I've finally broken through big time. Yes, you guessed it, I've just won the Sick Sad World Caption Competition! Thanks Vorbis. Your cheque's in the email.

Stupid Beautiful, Master of the Understatement

2005-05-29T18:24:00.000+09:30

In a comment on eebahgum!, my blogging friend Stupid Beautiful said "Nice work reworking your blog! I've done the same over at Stupid Beautiful Lies". He is indeed a master of the understatement—his is not a rework so much as a re-invention of what was already a very well written and engaging blog. It is now a truly spectacular display of Flash prowess. Perhaps he should rename it Stupendously Beautiful. Check it out!

eebahgum! three point oh

2005-05-29T00:13:00.000+09:30

eebahgum! has undergone another upgrade. Last time round I was frustrated with blogger's lack of categories, so I created my own by setting up a second blog with a series of category pages that link back to the URLs of each individual posting in the original blog. It's a bit clumsy and tedious to maintain, but straightforward enough. If you'd like more info just drop me a line.

The question was, how to get to those category pages. It would have been simple enough to just create text links in the right column, but that would move other info quite a long way down, and struck me as a little dull at the time. So I decided to try to be clever (too clever by half, looking back) and implement a DHTML menu system. This had one big plus, but several minuses. The plus was that it stayed visible even when users scrolled down the page. The first minus were that it was very slow to load, and some readers had disappeared before it appeared. The second was that it seemed not to work equally well in all browsers. And the third, perhaps the most important, was that no-one seemed to use it!

So the DHTML is gone, in favour of an image map banner with hotspots. And while I was there I reduced the hierarchy of the entire site by a level by merging some of the category pages. With any luck the whole thing will be a little quicker and more compatible, but I'd love your feedback.

Eurovision: And the loser is...

2005-05-23T07:55:00.000+09:30

Once again this year’s Eurovision song contest was utterly appalling. Whatever your music taste there was almost nothing here to like. I enjoyed the shallow but poppy Danish offering, and could tolerate the songs from Switzerland and Latvia, but needless to say none of those songs won.

Instead it was the favourites, Greece, who romped home with the truly frightful “My Number One” sung by a Helena Paparizou, a sort of Hellenic Jennifer Lopez with even less talent. And just check out these lyrics:

You're my lover
undercover
You're the most impressive person I discovered

You're delicious
So capricious
If I find out you don’t want me I'll be vicious
…
You're addiction
my conviction
You're my passion, my relief, my crucifixion

Now the stupid thing about Eurovision is that it doesn’t matter how good or bad the music is, because in the popular vote every country just votes for the other countries that are popular in their country. You could take away the music entirely and just cut to the voting and the result would be unchanged. It is, in a word, a farce. And rather like war, there are no winners, only losers. In this case the losers are music and the viewing public.

[Photo source Delegation, taken from the Eurovision website]

Review: Nikon D70 Firmware Upgrade 2

2005-05-22T20:24:00.000+09:30

> more articles on digicams

Hot on the heels of Nikon’s launch of the new D70S and D50 comes a firmware upgrade to the D70 which promises to raise the D70 to ‘S’ specification. The only features you’ll then be missing from the newer D70S are the slightly larger 2” LCD screen, and the ability to use a manual cable release. Huge kudos to Nikon for demonstrating such commitment to their user base.

I upgraded my trustee D70 a few days ago. The process is simple enough. You just download the zip file from Nikon, format your CF card, copy file A over, insert the CF card in the cameras and navigate through the camera’s menus until you find the Firmware version option. When you select upgrade the camera thinks for a couple of minutes and it’s done. Same process for file B and you have a D70S (almost).

[Incidentally, I suggest downloading from the US site here (Windows) or here (Mac). The equivalent UK and Australian sites require form filling, registration and serial numbers. That’s just a pain.]

But what does it to do for you? Well the immediately obvious thing is the revised menus (as shown). They were pretty intuitive in the first place, but now they look great too. Gone is the boring old blue, to be replaced by a new grey feel with yellow highlights a little more 3-D effect if I’m not mistaken. There’s no doubt it looks a little more modern and is also easier to read, especially in bright light. It’s a minor improvement, but a hit with me.

Nikon claim that performance of the 5-area AF system has been improved in Dynamic area and Closest subject modes. That’s got to be a good thing, because closest subject mode has frustrated me no end, sometimes seeming completely random in its choice of subject. I have abandoned it in favour of Single area mode some time ago. Now I have my AE-L button set to lock exposure only and my camera always set to single area AF, so that a half-pressed shutter button locks focus. The only time I might step away from that is when snapping a rapidly moving object in which case Dynamic area comes to the fore. And my initial (very subjective) tests suggest that the focusing is now better in both these modes. A little faster and a little more accurate in its selection of focus area, but I’ll still be sticking to my existing setup 98% of the time.

Nikon have also upgraded the PictBridge functionality, allowing page-size settings to be applied from the camera. Well, whoop-di-do. I’ve already stated what I think of PictBridge, and won’t be changing my mind there in a hurry!

Also upgraded is the display of remaining exposures in NEF (aka RAW) mode which always was a little screwy and pessimistic. Better that than optimistic, but closer to correct is probably the best alternative, and I’d say it is much more accurate now, although I seldom use RAW mode myself.

The penultimate change is that the default setting for the camera clock has been changed from 2004.01.01 to 2005.01.01 and you can no longer set the clock back to a date before 2004.12.31. Yup, it’s true. My world is changed forever :-)

Lastly, Nikon claim that a bug has been fixed which “sometimes caused communication between the camera and computer to be unexpectedly terminated when using Nikon Capture Camera Control”. I’ll have to take their word for that, as I have never tried Camera Control. Has anyone else experienced this problem?

So all in all, there’s nothing earth-shattering in this upgrade (which suggests the same of the D70S, although I have yet to try one) but enough to make it worth the effort of doing. It will make your already great camera just that bit nicer to use and probably improve the second-hand resale value. The most significant thing about it is is probably the message it sends, that Nikon cares, and that can't be a bad thing.

> more articles on digicams

FA Cup returns home to Highbury

2005-05-22T07:37:00.000+09:30

As we walked away from the Arsenal Stadium tonight, a highly inebriated but joyous gooner came up to us, and declared "We played like shit, but we won!"

And, in truth, it was hardly Arsenal's best performance. In typical fashion they dominated possession for large amounts of the game without ever doing anything meaningful in front of goal. Thierry Henri was sadly missed, as United were content to sit back early, with all 11 men behind the ball, and hit Arsenal on the break.

The second half showed the shrewdness of United's tactics as a tiring Arsenal allowed them more and more space in front of goal, and were certainly lucky not to go behind a couple of times. We were very thankful to Ljunberg's last minute headed clearance off the bar and the sterling efforts of Lehmann and Senderos.

Arsenal certainly picked up the intensity again in extra time and pressed forward in search of a goal, but even with Van Persie now in the fray there was nothing happening up front. And although Rooney and Ronaldo looked constantly dangerous, penalties were inevitable.

The big shock was that Arsenal actually won on penalties. Can anyone remember the last time that happened against any opposition outside the schoolboy league?

My views on mad Lens Lehmann are well documented, but even I have to admit he was imperious tonight. He made several great saves, was only caught out of position a couple of times, and his penalty save was exceptional.

So United managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And there's a kind of poetic justice in that, because Arsenal seem to me to have often been the better team against United without winning, and never was that more true than in that FA Cup semi-final a few years back. But then I'm a gooner, so I suppose you'd expect me to think that way.

C'mon the Arsenal!

2005-05-21T18:42:00.000+09:30

It's the FA Cup Final today, and for the first time ever I am in the UK for the event. That doesn't help very much as the game is in Wales, and I wouldn't have a hope of getting tickets anyway. So it's not much different from being in Australia, really.

I am therefore very keen to experience the game in a way that I couldn't in Australia, so the plan is to brave the drizzly weather and head into North London to a pub somewhere near the ground, perhaps the Faltering Fullback in Finsbury Park (say that 10 times quickly after a few pints!). The place will be packed, the atmosphere goonerish. Not sure what it will be like for Jonathan and Joanna who won't ever have experienced that degree of voluminous amber-lubricated lunacy before, but I should have fun!

Good old Arsenal,
We're proud to say that name,
And while we sing this song,
We'll win the game.

You need an optical viewfinder

2005-05-21T01:26:00.000+09:30

> more articles on digicams

There’s a growing trend for digicam manufacturers to fit out their trendy consumer models with increasingly large screens at the expense of an optical viewfinder. Sony, Pentax, Canon and Nikon, companies who would know better, have all jumped on the bandwagon. What in heaven’s name are they thinking?

The optical viewfinder is one of the few indispensable features of a digital camera, as necessary for the basic point and shoot photographer as for anyone else. And here are some reasons why:

LCD screens, although constantly improving, are still very hard to read in bright light. Even if you like using them to frame photos you will still sometimes need to use an optical viewfinder.
LCD screens tend to flatten out depth of field, so even large ones are sometimes not entirely indicative of the picture you’re about to take.
LCDs, particularly large ones, churn through battery power if you always have them on. Turning off the LCD and using an optical viewfinder is a great way to get a few more crucial pictures out of your ailing battery.
Holding the camera up against your head is a great way of reducing camera shake, and far more stable than holding it out in front of you, especially with today’s very small cameras.
And for some people the most important reason of all is that you simply can’t look like a real photographer holding up a camera at arms length in front of tour face and squinting at an LCD. No-one in this pose looks cool or radiates a sense of extreme photographic expertise.

> more articles on digicams

Part of the answer is undoubtedly blowing in the wind

2005-05-20T08:24:00.000+09:30

The placard waving luddites are at it again in the UK. This time they’re complaining about government plans to build more wind farms, bemoaning the amount of noise they make and how they spoil the lovely countryside.

The facts are that modern wind farms are incredibly quiet. Depending upon wind direction they sound ranges from inaudible to a subdued swishing as the blades pass near the tower. The supposed low frequency noise problem is a myth. You can hear mechanical gearing noise from up close, but usually not from a hundred metres away. People who cite mountains of anecdotal complaints of low frequency noise are either misinformed or deliberately misleading, and the evidence for illness caused by infrasound from wind turbines is tenuous at best, although undoubtedly worthy of further investigation.

Considerable amounts of scientific testing have consistently disproved the Don Quixote lobby’s noise complaints. Similarly, surveys from all over the world show overwhelmingly that opposition to wind farms decreases after people have lived near one for a while.

As for Prince Charles’ suggestion that wind farms are a “blot on the landscape”, he is entitled to his opinion, although I’m not sure why it should get any more airplay than anyone else’s. In that regard it seems that democracy still favours the Royals. Needless to say, I disagree with Charles, and so, it would seem, do the vast majority of people who live near wind farms.

Nevertheless, considerable sensitivity needs to be shown to local communities when deciding on locations for new developments, and perhaps the government has not handled this as well as it might have done. That said, the need to reduce emissions is a public concern more important than the sensibilities of individuals. We are talking about the long-term sustainability of the planet; about the future of our children, and the “blot” argument doesn’t really hold up very well in that context.

Lest anyone think I am as blind in my advocacy of wind farms as I accuse their opponents of being in their opposition, let me look, if not at the other side of the coin, at least at its edge. Wind farms are not the answer to our energy and emission problems, per se. They are, however, an excellent partial answer, with a payback cost similar to other technologies and a very low cost per unit of electricity (lower, for example, than nuclear energy).

It will always be cheaper to save electricity than to generate it. And there can be little doubt that our usage is far too high. But it would be naïve to suggest that lifestyle change will do any more than delay the inevitable need to find long-term energy generation solutions.

In the end, I think we’d all be better of with a little less hot air, and a few more wind farms.

Bill Gates the Benevolent

2005-05-18T01:42:00.000+09:30

It doesn’t seem so long ago that Bill Gates was being pilloried as the personification of evil. In fact, a quick Google search shows 29,200 matches for “bill gates” and antichrist. Scary, because I keep writing ‘quick Google search’ as if one were able to do it slowly and more thoroughly if required. Scary also because we all know that a goodly percentage of those 29,200 matches probably aren’t kidding; that many people actually believe all that semi-Christian, semi-new age numerological bullshit that suggests absolutely and incontrovertibly that William Gates III or maybe the Pope (or perhaps someone else) is definitely evil incarnate ‘cos it dun say so right there in the King James Version of the Bible.

Surely most free-thinking people now realise that this is probably not true. In fact, as massively wealthy business tycoons go, Bill seems a pretty good guy who keeps to himself and has an endearing geekiness that makes you realise that Revenge of the Nerds and Jimmy Neutron really are sophisticated allegory and that there’s still hope for those of us who’d rather blog than bungee jump.

In fact, through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill is one of the world’s most generous philanthropists, giving hundreds of millions of dollars to charitable causes. More than that, they give intelligently, not just throwing money at do-good causes, but selectively funding proposals from leading thinkers to address major world issues. The Foundation’s “grand challenges for global health” program has drawn so many quality responses that Bill recently announced an upgrade in funding from $200 million to $450 million. Now that’s health funding not be sneezed at.

I am sure that software really can be evil, and I offer as proof Microsoft PowerPoint. But as for Bill, I have little doubt that he has done more good for the world than all his critics put together.

Am I an A-list blogger?

2005-05-08T05:33:00.000+09:30

Well, in so far as I saw my name on ‘a list’ of blogs some time ago, perhaps I am!

‘A-list blogger’ is a phrase bandied about pretty often, but what exactly is such a beast, and why should the rest of us care? When I typed “what is an A-list blogger” into Google, I got all of 7 hits, most of which referred to a brief piece at Stephen’s Web referring to Dave Pollard’s article which refers, in turn, to a few other bits of research. But Dave also offers some fascinating and extensive calculations of his own, and I’ve taken the liberty of grabbing this eye-opening table:

Frankly, I had no idea that any bloggers were getting that many hits. That’s truly amazing, and good luck to them. I find myself a little jealous, a little incredulous, and little unsatisfied. I say unsatisfied for two reasons. Firstly, I find the notion that a ‘top blog’ can be defined quantitatively just a little distressing (though I have no doubt that you generally only get that popular by offering sustained quality). But secondly, I can’t imagine people who get that many hits feel the same thrill that we ‘up and comers’ feel each and every time someone visits. Sure, I’d like more readers (as opposed to simply hits) but I rather enjoy reading my stats, looking at every incoming hostname and feeling some slight personal connection with both , er, I mean every one of you.

In the streets of Chelsea, Premiership Champions

2005-05-03T06:50:00.000+09:30

It was 50 years coming, but Chelsea finally won the Premiership title on Saturday night. And rather than complaining about how they had to buy an entirely new team to do it, or bemoaning their sometimes negative football, I wish them all the best. They were clearly the best team for the better part of the year. Their success was built, not merely on a bottomless wallet, but also on strong management from Mourinho; superb defence, most notably from John Terry and Petr Cech; a strong midfield who can track back but also generate drive and score goals; and a very creative attack. Joe Cole, for example, has blossomed into an inventive and exciting player for both Chelsea and England.

So my beloved Gunners have no doubt being beaten by the better team this year, and there’s no shame in that. And being such a good loser, I thought we’d head down to Fulham Road, Chelsea on Saturday night to absorb some of the premiership-winning atmosphere. I have to admit, when I went to Stamford Bridge to see Chelsea thump Pompey earlier this season, there was a distinct lack of atmosphere, as if Chelsea were already too used to winning. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case this time. Instead there was a great deal of singing and merriment, every second person advertising Fly Emirates or waving a blue and white flag. Every car horn blared and every glass and voice was raised, except those that had been thrown in the middle of the road to be crushed by cars. Glasses, I mean, not voices. The vocal throng didn’t seem to have a huge repertoire, but at least most of it was clean and good-spirited, which was lucky considering Jonathan and Joanna were with me, and I was resplendent in red and white!

I was amused when the crowd outside a pub started singing “Are you watching Arsenal?” There’s a certain comfort in the fact that even as the new champions, Chelsea fans still seem to measure their success by comparison with their illustrious North London neighbours.

Review: Canon 350D (Rebel XT)

2005-04-26T05:18:00.000+09:30

> more articles on digicams

When the Canon EOS 300D (or Digital Rebel in the US) came on the market in late 2003 it revolutionised the camera market. It was the first decent DSLR that was (just) affordable enough for real people; a highly capable camera that didn’t require you to mortgage your house and your family. The 300D has gone on to become one of the biggest selling cameras of all time, and rightly so. It’s a good camera that takes very good pictures.

But a year and a half is a long time in the digicam world. A raft of more advanced competitors has come on the market and the 300D has started to look a little long in the shutter. And let’s face it, it was no up-market technological marvel in the first place. It suffered from a crippled feature set and plasticky build and oozed ‘cost-cutting’ rather than ‘premium quality’.

There can be do doubt that the new 350D (Digital Rebel XT) is an advance on the 300D in many ways. It boasts an excellent 8 megapixel sensor with Canon’s newer DIGIC II brain; it no longer suffers from deliberately crippled functions, and it’s smaller, lighter and much more responsive. Better quality, more features, reduced form factor, same price-point. A winning formula, surely?

Maybe, but I’ve spent a little time with the 350D, and frankly, I can’t help feeling that Canon have really missed an opportunity here. In many areas, the 350 still trails, or at least fails to better, the Nikon D70, its main competitor:

It has a small viewfinder, much like the D70. It’s not unusable, but it’s not exciting either.
It has a smaller CCD, despite the added resolution. That means a 1.6 multiplier on lend focal length. Good news if you are a telephoto photographer, but not for the average shooter looking for wide angle pics.
It has poorer battery life.
It has a smaller frame buffer.
Menu visibility is poorer and less intuitive.
It still has that annoying backplate control LCD. It’s undoubtedly less practical than a top-plate display and much more prone to scratches.
The standard zoom lens is really soft and more than negates any possible image quality improvement from the increase to 8 megapixels. It's not a subtle thing which would be obvious only to an expert—this lens is just downright poor.
It still feels cheap and plasticky. If this was my prime criticism of the 300D, the 350D is not much different. And however much Canon resellers try to push that as a feature, this is a camera which simply does not exude the near-professional image that the D70 manages to. The Nikon looks at the very least like a professional camera’s sibling. On several occasions it has helped me take photographs in situations where only credentialed journalists would ordinarily be allowed. The 350D improves on the 300D in this regard, but in the ‘prosumer’ world, it’s still less ‘pro’ than ‘sumer’.

All these weaknesses, as I see them, are almost certainly deliberate placement decisions by Canon so as not to dent the market for the EOS 20D. But up against offerings from Pentax, and Nikon, the 350D seems rather a disappointment, from a manufacturer whose offerings I generally have very high regard for. Of course, many people will buy it solely on the basis of the higher pixel count. But the bottom line is, in order to take advantage of that, you’ll have to upgrade from the standard kit lens, which will make the package relatively poor value, and knocking on the door of the far more desirable 20D.

If you are in the market for a DSLR and small size is a particular criterion, then the Pentax *ist DS is still my first recommendation. But the new Nikon D50, due to hit shops any moment now, appears to be simply a smaller D70 with almost all the features. If that’s the case, Nikon deserve to have a winner in this market segment.

> more articles on digicams

New Canon S2 IS—one of the world’s most desirable compact digicams?

2005-04-24T08:47:00.000+09:30

> more articles on digicams

It may only have had a 3 megapixel sensor, but the venerable Canon S1 IS was close to compact digital camera perfection. The compact 10x optical zoom was coupled with a vibration reduction system which really worked (see my previous review, Shock results with long zoom digicams), a functional, albeit small, swivelling LCD screen, excellent movie mode, good handgrip, and let’s face it, very cool styling.

The only problem was that 3 megapixels seemed like a fairly low spec for the price. But megapixels can be deceptive, and my experience was that the S1 IS took very fine pictures, better than many 4 and 5 megapixel cameras.

It has seemed a long time coming, but a replacement camera was inevitable, and now the new S2 IS is here. It’s now a 5 megapixel style machine, with an improved 12x optical zoom, larger 1.8” LCD, 2.4 fps shooting speed and added focus assist lamp. It still has an excellent movie mode, the LCD still swivels, and the camera still has Canon’s excellent Image Stabilisation system. Regular readers will know that I consider Canon’s system better than Minolta and Panasonic’s offerings. Canon have simply been doing image stabilisation for longer, through their excellent video cameras, and have become pretty good at it.

The only area in which the S2 IS is not improved over its predecessor is in size and weight. Unusually in this world of increasing miniaturisation, the S2 is a little bigger and heavier than the old S1. At 113 x 78 x 75 mm and 405g it’s no back pocket special. It’s about the same size as Minolta’s Z5, and rather smaller than the Panasonic FZ20, its main competitors. And there’s another competitor in the wings, Sony’s new DSC-H1. The Sony has an impressive 2.5” screen (although it doesn’t swivel), but is heavier than Canon and Minolta.

I have to admit, the long zoom, anti-shake digicam market segment my favourite, and it’s certainly hotting up. But I have a feeling this new Canon will be the front-runner.

> more articles on digicams

Nikon D70 real-life review

2005-04-09T00:59:00.000+09:30

> more articles on digicams
> related review: Nikon D70 Firmware upgrade 2.0

In 4 months my Nikon D70 has boiled in the 100 degree heat of Adelaide, sweated in the Singapore humidity, frozen on the ski slopes of Poland, been rained on in Berlin and snowed on in Disneyland Paris. On the way it has taken about 8,000 photos. Plenty of ammunition for a review. Of course, there are already many on the web that go into such extreme detail that I would add nothing. They are all based on the premise that minute differences in image quality are really critical and worth discussing for 20 pages. And I have read them all voraciously. This premise is, of course, largely nonsense. For example, I can't believe how many reviews have criticised the D70 for problems with moiré. In taking thousand of shots of every conceivable type, I have not seen moiré problems once, but I had been whipped into a frenzy of worry about it because of all the reviews.

The sad truth is that camera reviews, typically so influential on our purchasing decisions are seldom based around the question which is ultimately most important—what is the camera like to live with and use day-to-day?

To cut a long story short, the D70 is generally great, but still has several minor annoyances and a few major ones. I'll summarise the good, bad and ugly in this post. In the next few days I'll also post on how the D70 compares with the new Canon EOS 350D (or Rebel XT as they call it in the US) and the DSLR v top end compact digicam dilemma (which isn't really a dilemma at all).

The good

The D70 feels great in the hand. Sure it's big, but feels substantial, solid and secure. Thats a real benefit with a long lens.
It is responsive and fast. Power on to first shot is virtually instant. It has a large frame buffer, decent shooting speed in continuous mode (expect as noted below) and is always ready to shoot.
Image quality is generally superb.
Controls are generally well-placed and intuitive, except as noted below.
Top plate displays are nice.
The 18–70 lens is excellent.
The 70–300 costs next to nothing and feels light and plasticky (because it is) but actually pulls in some superb photos. It's a little soft, but for the money it's incredible value.
The built-in flash is pretty reasonable. This is something I have generally disliked about previous Nikon digicams I have used.
The little protective cover for the back panel LCD is great. It gets very hacked up and needs to be replaced regularly, but imagine your LCD taking that beating. The cover does tend to flip off a little easily though.
Battery life is fantastic. An amateur with pretensions like me will never run out of juice if even vaguely organised. In 4 months of heavy shooting I have only had to dig out my backup battery twice. On occasions I have shot 500 pictures or more over 3 or 4 days without a battery change, even though I have been using the flash occasionally and the LCD screen all the time.

The average

The viewfinder is too small.
I seldom use the depth of field preview any more because the button is just too far away from my pinky to be comfortable and maintain a firm grip on the body.
There's a tendency to underexpose from time to time. My pictures have got better; it just seems to take a while to get used to how the exposure system thinks.
I find the image selection/viewing system a little unintuitive. In thumbnail mode using the left/right arrow keys navigates through images, but in full screen mode that toggles other functions and you need to scroll up and down. I'd also like to be able to magnify more so that I can actually see sharpness and noise.
The menu system could be simpler. You get used to it, but I think new users will find the little Pentax DS superior in this regard.
As I have experienced in the past, Nikon's battery status indicators leave a lot to be desired. They show full for ages, but when they show only slightly less than full you are going to be in trouble very soon. The same has been true of my Nikon 35 mm SLRs and all the Nikon digicams I have used.
The remote receiver on the camera body is quite directional. If you are standing on the wrong side of the lens it's often hard to get the shutter to fire.

The downright bad

There's no obvious way of seeing what ISO setting you're on without actually checking. Many a good photo has been rendered average because the previous night I had been shooting in low light and had cranked the 'film speed' up to 800 or 1600 ISO and forgotten to return it to 200. Next morning's beautiful shots turn out too noisy and have to be tweaked in a noise reduction package such as Neat Image or Noise Ninja. I'd like to see the ISO setting in the viewfinder and LCD panel all the time.
If you want Nikon's software with noise reduction capability (Nikon Capture) you have to fork out extra. That's a rip-off and an argument in favour of P2P file sharing if ever there were one.
You have to pay extra for the remote. It's quite cheap, but apparently hard to get in some markets. It should be in the box to start with.
Nikon's Picture Perfect software looks good, but in use it sucks. The older Nikon View was much more competent and I believe it can still be downloaded from Nikon websites.
My D70 does not shoot at 3 fps. And neither did my previous one. Out of the box it was fine, and then in a week or two seemed to have forgotten how to shoot fast. The camera store and Nikon could shed no light on the problem so they simply replaced my camera body. And now this one has the same problem. Is it something I have set? Probably, but no-one seems to know what.

Summary

For the money the D70 is a superb piece of kit. If you are looking at a camera in this price range, then buy one unless you absolutely must have something smaller, in which case the Pentax *ist DS, unpronounceable name aside, is excellent, as is the new Canon 350D (Rebel XT).

> more articles on digicams

2005-04-05T07:43:00.000+09:30

Clive and Jonathan on Brighton pier

2005-04-05T07:40:00.000+09:30

Dusk at the seaside resort of Brighton in Sussex, unretouched

Walking like an Englishman

2005-04-05T07:11:00.000+09:30

Could someone please explain to me why the English, who drive on the left, prefer to walk on the right? When walking towards someone in Australia, most people instinctively move to the left and allow the other person to pass on their right, as they would drive. In England, expect the opposite. Go figure.

For that matter, where did driving on the left come from? I'm told it goes back to the Middle Ages, where armed men would pass each other on the 'non-sword' side so as to avoid attack. That seems sensible enough. Why then did Europeans and Americans choose the opposite way? Ah, the great questions of existence...

AdSense or NonSense?

2005-03-24T07:04:00.000+10:30

Even the observant among you probably haven't noticed that I've removed Google AdSense from eebahgum! This assumption is based on the number of click-throughs my advertising has received in the three months it's been running...wait for it...ONE! Thanks for clicking through, Mum. Yup, I have made the grand total of $0.06 effective, which effectively gets reduced to $0.05 (hey, give me back my one cent Google, you can afford it!).

I think it's pretty obvious that AdSense is not going to be my path to untold wealth, but can it work for anyone, or is it simply an overhyped waste of bytes? I think the answer is, "It depends". Frankly, I have no idea how much income potential there is, even in a best-case scenario, but here are a few ways you can at least maximise your earnings:

Get lots of hits. eebahgum's few hundred hits a month just doesn't cut it, I'm afraid. I obviously need to feature Britney Spears and Pamela Anderson more often.
Go for breadth as well. The author of one blog I read today was using AdSense on more than 400 sites (now let's see, 400 times 5 cents is, er...). I'm sure they all feature really high quality writing too!
Stick to one topic and mention its buzzwords often. A blog like eebahgum!, in which you might get ten different topics on one page, does little to encourage well-focused ads from AdSense. All too often I've ended up with ads about blogging—not likely to excite my bank manager.
Above all, have modest expectations, and you won't be disappointed.

Happy blogging!

Canon Pixma IP4000 review: Look at the pix from my Pixma, ma!

2005-03-22T10:15:00.000+10:30

Being in the UK for a few months having planned to only be here a few weeks, I find myself without many of the basic necessities—spa bath, home gym, radio control racing car, A3+ colour printer and so on. The last of those needs was pretty critical, so I set about finding myself a new printer. It was the usual brief—a printer which could do everything perfectly but cost next to nothing to buy or run.

And there lies the rub with inkjet printers. The buy costs usually look cheap, but running costs are deceptively high, especially if you do any quality colour work such as photographs. So I looked at every printer on the UK market around the £130 pound mark, read every review, and bought the Canon IP4000 for less than £90 over the web from Pixmania in France. All the reviews said it was great at everything, but were they right?

Largely, yes. This printer is elegant, well-built, very fast (A4 page of text in 8 seconds; 6”x4” photo in less than 60 seconds), and full-featured. It duplexes, has a paper feeder and a built-in cassette, prints directly on to CDs and is absurdly quiet.

And the print quality is almost exceptional. With black text on plain paper, it is the fastest and best quality inkjet I have ever seen. With full colour photos it creates rich, saturated pictures with near photolab quality and only the merest hint of pixelation in areas of continuous colour to betray its humble pricetag. Honestly, most people will think they’re from the lab. The secret is in the 5 colour system Canon uses where there’s one black for text, and a second, richer, dye-based black to enhance dynamic range in colour prints. Compared to Epson 6-colour machines I’ve seen, it’s very nearly as good, but much cheaper and faster.

On the only printable CDs I’ve tried so far, Verbatim's fast dry disks, the images are as detailed as low-quality coated inkjet paper, and have a very slightly yellowish tinge, but the effect is fantastic. I’m now on the quest for some glossy disks to see how they look.

And according to some magazine reviews these near lab-quality prints will cost you around 29p for a 6” x 4”. That’s about 72c Australian or 50c US. Your photolab will do them for half the price and get marginally better quality, but for a convenient desktop solution for short runs, you can’t beat the IP4000. If you were to spend more money on a better inkjet, you may well end up with larger running costs as well as greater capital outlay.

Overall, for quality, value and flexibility, this little Canon is unbeatable. If you are in the market for a printer, buy one. Spending less would be a false economy as the higher running costs would take their toll fast enough. Spending more would simply be pointless if you have a photolab within a reasonable distance.

Do you remember where you were on July 20 1969?

2005-03-19T02:25:00.000+10:30

Do you remember where you were on July 20 1969, as Neil Armstrong planted his foot on the moon (conspiracy theories aside)? I was watching in the sitting room of a little white farm house in Wisborough Green, Sussex. My parents and I were living in Nigeria at the time and had rented the farm house for a UK holiday. It had sounded idyllic—a perfect little house in a perfect little English village.

I was only 4½ at the time, but I remember it very clearly. It was a time of firsts for me—the first time I was ever woken up by sheep at my window; the first time I ever sat inside the car, goggle eyed and giggling, while Dad hosed it down. And of course, that moon landing thing.

35½ years later I was back in the UK and determined to visit my childhood haunts. That determination wilted when I was actually in the car and heading west across Sussex. I realised that if the reality of today were not consistent with my starry-eyed recollections of childhood I would likely be deeply distressed; that a small brick in the foundation of my self-definition would be shaken irreversibly.

I need not have feared. Wisborough Green is still the quintessential lovely little English village. Shops and houses line the village green and look over games of cricket, and the whole postcard view is overseen by a stunning Norman church complete with tidy but somehow still ramshackle cemetery. Standing by the church, as the waning sun cast dramatic shadows through the mossy gravestones, I was overcome with emotion. It was as if my childhood perspective and aspirations for the future were colliding with my adult memories of the past in a moment I had both longed for and dreaded. Yet the collision was soft and uplifting, like returning home to a huge hug after some time away.

If you’ve ever had such an experience, or can remember what you were doing on July 20 1969, I’d love to hear from you.

I'll be home a little late, Mum...

2005-03-17T03:21:00.000+10:30

When I left Adelaide on Boxing Day I was fully expecting to back by early Feb, but with Joanna and Jonathan already in Poland, and no work in prospect the door was open for a grand adventure. And so it has proven to be.

After meeting J and J in Berlin and spending a few excellent days there, we took the train over to Poland, arriving in Miedzyrzecz where Joanna's mum works as a psychiatrist at the local hospital. A week and a half there and then on to Krakow for a few days—a marvelous city dripping with history and photo ops. A flying visit to the ski slopes of the Tatra mountains (there and back in a day), then I was off to England with Joanna and Jonathan set to join me a couple of weeks down the track.

On my arrival in England I received an email from a headhunter, and the next morning donned my only travelling suit and went off to an interview, and a few days later had a job offer for 6 months or so. With no job to return to, the opportunity to be closer to Joanna's family in Poland for a while and the chance to spend more time in the land of my Father, replete as it is with childhood memories, it was a no-brainer really. Why then did it consume so much brain for so long? Well, I had to worry about accommodation, schooling, transport, the exorbitant cost of living, commitments in Australia like home, mortgage, car lease, choirs, badminton club, not to mention friends, etc. I found myself changing my mind several times a day, swinging from one absolute certainty to the opposite one. But with no work in Adelaide the alternative was to work in Sydney or Melbourne and commute home to Adelaide on weekends. Ultimately, England seemed easier.

So here we are, living in Redhill, Surrey in a 2 bedroom exec apartment costing 3 times what it would in Adelaide. We are strolling distance to supermarkets, trains and buses, which you need to be when without a car and when petrol costs more than twice as much as you're used to. I am working for a firm in the financial sector in the adjoining town of Reigate, where Jonathan is also going to school. London is half an hour away by train, but trains are expensive, and the trip is tiring once you factor the underground connections and the amount of walking you typically have to do.

But this extended working holiday has already allowed me to fulfill a few dreams. I have been to see the Arsenal play at Highbury for the first time in 37 years as a supporter. I have been to Disneyland, Paris (purely for Jonathan's sake, of course). I have visited a few childhood haunts I have not seen for more than 30 years including the idyllic township of Wisborough Green in Sussex where I lived briefly as a child. I have been to Stonehenge, Brighton, Hastings, Salisbury Cathedral and just last week seen Les Arts Florissants doing Rameau at the Barbican Hall.

Detailed coverage to come. Meanwhile, the grand adventure continues...

Where's that wally Clive?

2005-03-10T03:42:00.000+10:30

The observant among you may have noticed that there’s been not a whole lot of blogging going on at eebahgum! I had hoped that my trip to Europe would give me plenty of photos and material for blogging, and so it has been. On the other hand, it’s been so frantic, and internet access so intermittent and funds, at times, so short, and…well you get the idea.

The good news, depending on your perspective, is that eebahgum! is back on-line, albeit from a different part of the world. The bald bloke from Oz is, for the time being at least, the bald bloke from Surrey in the UK. But more on all of that soon!

A guide to throwing up on aeroplanes

2005-01-08T05:34:00.001+10:30

Not many people enjoy flying, especially in aircraft. By the time I was 9 I had already been around the world more than 6 times based on air miles, and every one of them was spent clutching the barf bag like a comforter. I can’t remember a single flight on which I didn’t have occasion to use it on take-off, but the culmination was that famous school flight to Whyalla in northern South Australia during which I threw up on my friend Martin. That my friendship with him survived that incident is a great testimony to, well, something or other. Ironically, the plane was a Focker Friendship.

Flying was ever thus for me. As an adult I began to commute around Australia with terrifying regularity, and each flight left me greener than the last. I tried every pharmaceutical remedy known to humanity. Most left me spaced out or completely dehydrated. That seems to be a good outcome at a party, but not on a flight.

Finally, a pharmacist put me on to Sea-Bands and my life was changed forever. These little elasticated wristbands look like they’ve fallen off a 1/3 scale John McEnroe doll, and have a hard plastic ‘button’ in them which presses on an acupressure point on each wrist.

Frankly, I am the world’s biggest sceptic when it comes to his sort of thing. I am no fan of accubabble, and have no credible scientific explanation for their operation, but dammit, Sea-Bands work! From the first moment I flew with them, I have thrown up not once, and almost every flight has been pleasurable. After a lifetime of air-vomit, what a surprise it is to find myself coming off flights feeling fresher than when I went on.

I’ll try to describe the difference I experience without too much intimate detail about diced carrots. I have always had that sensation of my stomach rising as the plane begins its first major ascent. Previously my stomach would start to rise, then keep rising until it had come out of my mouth into the sick bag or onto the poor wretch beside me. With the Sea-Bands, that rising sensation just seems to stop a moment after it begins. In practice it’s pretty dramatic, and works even in the car. When I have car sick passengers I point out to them firstly where the electric window controls are, then where the acupressure point is, and tell them to press down there with their thumbs. In several years my upholstery has not been soiled by spew on a single occasion.

And I’m happy to report that Sea-Bands acquitted themselves with great aplomb on their first major overseas assignment. Despite a great deal of turbulence, especially from Singapore to Frankfurt, I flew well.

For me, Sea-Bands really have been life changing, and I recommend them without hesitation. There are competitors out there which may work just as well, but Sea-Bands are subtler-looking than other brands I’ve seen, and no-one want to advertise being a ‘bad flyer’.

Travelog: Spy games and a flasher (picture below) in Berlin

2005-01-07T22:08:00.000+10:30

Everything I knew about Berlin I learnt from spy novels and reruns of Hogan’s Heroes. Len Deighton and John le Carré in particular served as my pre-visit guidebooks, and taught me that the simple act of calling a thoroughfare ‘strasse’ rather than street would transform it, at least in the mind’s eye, into a place of history and culture, with a delicious hint of intrigue.

As my flight arrived at 9 am, with my eventual destination being Poland, I thought of spending a day sightseeing. Then Joanna and Jonathan, who had preceded me to Poland, suggested they join me. So I set about finding a hotel using Google and the words ‘cheap’, ‘budget’ and the like. That’s how I happened upon the Hotel Crystal, on Kantstrasse, relatively low-cost and close to everything. Reviewers on the web seemed to think the place clean, but what really caught my attention were phrases such as “a piece of the old Germany” and “like something out of a Cold War novel”. I was in like a bullet from a Kaleshnikov.

The Hotel turned out to be everything I could have imagined. The small darkly wooded reception area with ancient Chesterfields led to a tiny archaic lift in which no self-respecting woman could have travelled mit baggage. Worn carpet led through a twist of gloomy corridor to the small dark brown door which was to be ours. The room itself had a very high dark brown ceiling, joined to the heavily worn carpet by fading 60s wallpaper. It was clean, had a large and respectable bathroom, and was charmingly daggy. I was not disappointed.

That was before I had sampled the beds, of course. The wretched things, composed of two single mattresses in a double frame, sagged like huge sagging things (the only decent simile I could think of was unpleasant) and started me on a procession of backaches I was to endure for some weeks. I found myself sleeping perched on the very edge because it was the only firm spot from which I would not roll into the bottomless abyss which lay in the middle.

What this bed needed, I opined on several occasions, was a ruddy great board under the mattresses. On our last day, as we were packing to leave, I searched under the beds for anything we may have dropped, and lo and behold, under each mattress was a cupboard door, matching the cupboard in our room. So much for my initial hypothesis. New working hypothesis (which I unfortunately did not have time to test): what this bed needed was to be thrown from an upper story window.

Of course, what ultimately makes a place is the people, and so it was with the Hotel Crystal. The owner was a small, angular and quite elderly woman with a huge, frizzy blonde wig, who insisted on wearing tight animal print leggings and alligator stilettos. It’s almost too obvious to say she looked like the Madam of Berlin brothel. Joanna was reminded of the Leonard Cohen song Closing Time:

My very sweet companion gets me full and gets me laughing
She’s a hundred but she’s wearing something tight.

But the character of the moment was the Day Manager, Vasco. From the outset he wore the drole smirk of an eccentric public school master, and amused himself by making obtuse comments about anything and everything. We were at a loss to decide whether he was rude, weird, very funny, or some combination of all three. What Vasco Said became a daily topic of conversation. As time passed we grew to like him increasingly, and actually found him helpful in an indirect way as he clearly started to warm to us as well.

Vasco was in our room one morning attempting unsuccessfully to fix our telephone which had lost the somewhat defining ability to make telephone calls. Somehow the conversation turned to names, and under some badgering from us he confessed that his surname was ‘Flasher’. Apparently telephone enquirers regularly hung up on hearing this, and when he sent out confirmation faxes there were an unusually high number of no-shows.

But it gets worse. His father’s name was Alfonse, which to an Englishman is smarmy enough, but in many parts of Europe actually means ‘pimp’. Alfonse Flasher. The mind boggles.

It's too hot in Europe in winter

2005-01-06T19:10:00.000+10:30

I was born and lived my early life in the tropics (Ghana and Nigeria respectively) and have resided in Australia for the last three decades. With that backdrop, there’s no doubting that Europe feels cold in winter. Temperatures in Berlin during my stay ranged from 0°C to 4°C, and there was often mild drizzle. Of course, I had travelled with hat, scarf and gloves, but found myself buying new gloves because I couldn’t operate the camera in my existing ones (who’d have thought of checking that in Australia where it had been 36°C the day before I left?) and a new beanie.

Thus attired, I was able to cope pretty well with the cold. My nose ran regularly (but noses run in my family, har de har) and it’s rather amusing to go to a street food vendor asking for a cold drink and be given one of the counter, because the drinks outside are colder than the ones in the fridge.

The real problem I found with the cold was, in fact, the heat indoors. Every hotel room, house and shop I have seen in Germany or Poland is too damned hot. The locals may consider that snug, but it’s past that, with the effect that the air is often too dry and still. Sleeping with so little humidity left me dry, parched and itchy-eyed, and on our return to the hotel each evening we found ourselves turning off the central heating and opening up all the windows.

The other annoyance was having to dress and undress all the time. Every time I walked into a shop I was suddenly boiling and had to take of hat, scarf, gloves, coat, warm layer and sometimes mid layer. The sort of adventure shops at which I buy my warmwear encourage us to dress in layers, and that’s great advice for flexibility, light travel weight, etc. But it is, conspicuously, not what the locals tend to do. Many of them have huge, thick coats with fur-lined collars that seem precisely made for the temperature differential between indoors and out. That's not a real alternative for travellers simply becasue of the bulk, but perhaps when I acquire my chateau on the French Reviera I shall keep a collection of such coats there in readiness for my next visit.

Travelog: Frankfurt Airport

2005-01-03T19:13:00.000+10:30

Frankfurt Airport is apparently the second largest in Europe but is ancient, dated and grubby for the most part. By some cruel accident of fate I was stuck with a little over two hours in transit. Not long enough to sleep nor leave, so I set about exploring. Alluring signs promised the hope of endless high class shopping, but it was 6 in the morning and they seemed only to lead, via long stationary travelators, to austere polished granite corridors with a few closed and barred shops. The slightest hint of stale cigarette odour hung delicately in the empty corridors, something I was to encounter regularly in Germany.

As a child I remember being completely overwhelmed with excitement at the solitary bleakness of such airports. But that was the late 1960s in Calcutta, Bahrain, Damascus. In 2004 Germany it was less impressive.

So I set about finding departure lounge A18 for my flight to Berlin. Being an EU passport holder, I lined up in the ‘express lane’ with a slight buzz of excitement—this was the first time I was, as it were, using my EU passport in anger. The only problem was, everyone else there was an EU passport holder as well, so the express lane moved like a drunken bratwurst, while the non-express lane was empty.

Finally I was waved through with the reluctant instruction to “go to left, one hundred meters, red door”. If I had hoped this would take me to my destination I was sadly mistaken. It took me instead to a 500 m corridor with static travelators, which took me to another, then another, before I finally arrived at a small lift well. This took me up two floors to a (you guessed it) 500 m corridor with static travelators, then another, before another lift took me back down two floors to another corridor and series of gates which led me to a (yawn) corridor with…

You may be forgiven for thinking I am exaggerating the extent of my tour of the Frankfurt sites, but I assure you, it’s not far off the mark. This sojourn finally took me to a far more modern corridor with actual people and a coffee shop and stuff, and lo and behold, my departure lounge! This was clearly a much newer section of the airport and was actually quite modern and attractive in a slightly austere way.

I alighted atop a stool with a good cup of German English Breakfast, and watched an interesting transaction between the waitress and a whining young American tourist. He was already the third I had seen who seemed to think Germany backward because he was having difficulty understanding the money, menus and language. Whining Americans are a site familiar to most travellers, I imagine. It seems there is a conscious attempt on the part of some of them to give the US a bad name, as if US foreign policy were not enough. They should be given a crash course in Cultural Respect 101 before allowing them to leave the country.

My Lufthansa flight was much in keeping with Frankfurt airport—rather old and jaded, inferior even to a cheap Australian domestic flight, though the service was fine, and the plane had Recarro leather seats, stylish in a car, not much good for mass transit, especially for those of us with no hair! Never a fan of the touch of cold, clammy leather on the back of my head, I had to lean slightly forward for the entire flight, so was thankful to finally alight in Berlin just before 9 am.

Travelog: Bottomless Singapore

2005-01-02T01:12:00.000+10:30

It was one of the first things that struck me—unlike their fat-arsed Australian counterparts, most Singaporeans have no bums. They are a slim, small-hipped people with very petite behinds. Sounds like the start of a bad joke. “So what do they sit on?” “Chairs!” Boom, boom!

Acknowledging the different local build, Marks & Spencers, that bastion of ordinary Englishness, have racks full of bras made specially for Asian women, though I’m sure they’d be happy to sell them to men or women of any ethnicity.

With only five hours between flights most sensible people would enjoy the air-conditioned sumptuousness of Changi airport, surely the world’s finest, with its magnificent shops, excellent eateries, free movie lounge. fitness centre, pool and tropical gardens.

But not I. I decided to make a dash through customs and jump on the SMRT (Singapore Mass Rail Transit system). With enthusiastic but unintelligible instructions from one of the station staff who seemed to think me his mission in life, I finally managed to work out where I was going and purchase a ticket. “Where to now?” I asked, because I couldn’t actually see the train station. “Now you just take the train,” he said, and pointed vaguely towards a huge atrium behind glass doors. So there I went, but where was the station? Where was the platform? Then I realised that this huge, spotless, shiny hall was the station and the platform, separated from the actual track by extensive sliding doors which only open when there’s a train on the other side of them. Neat, tidy, sensible and safe, words easily associated with many aspects of Singapore.

The train is smooth and quiet and became very full as we headed for the city. A fascinating ethnic mix of Malays, Indians, Chinese ignored me on mass, with odd sideways comments to a friend. I was conspicuously touristy, with functional lightweight travel gear, juggling a large map and with the Nikon D70 as a necklace. And I was conspicuously the only such person on the train.

In fact, for a city which hosted in excess of 8 million tourists in the last year alone, there were precious few of us about, even on Orchard Road, the heart of Singapore’s shopping precinct. The amazing range of shopping may appeal to tourists, but it exists primarily for locals. My theory is that Singapore shopping has evolved as a means to escape the oppressive humidity. Each time you cross the threshold into a shopping centre a cool wave of air-conditioning washes blissfully over your face. It’s an amazing relief, rather like the first 3 seconds at the urinal. On the other hand, walking back out into the humidity is the opposite experience. I cope with these conditions so badly now that I find it hard to believe I was born and brought up in the tropics.

Singapore at Christmas is a dazzling spectacle. Every shop, building and lamppost is awash with lights and colour, and even at 10 pm on a Sunday night on Boxing Day, there are people everywhere as most of the shops are still open. There’s a buzz in the air, though, which is much more than just petty consumerism at its most vigorous. There’s actually a genuine feeling of enjoyment, energy, and socialness as well. The air is rich with enthusiastic conversation and laughter, and the bright lights of the shopping centres are constantly punctuated by the flash of digital cameras. Suddenly I felt less like a tourist.

Outside one shopping centre was this lavish Christmas tree, and every passing group seemed to want to be photographed with it. But since everyone had a camera, everyone started photographing every group. This young couple with their chihuahuas must have had dozens of photos taken of them by complete strangers, and became amusingly embarrassed.

And if there is one memory I will take out of Singapore today, it’s that people were universally happy, enthusiastic and helpful. When I was last in Singers about 10 years ago, I only seemed to sense that in Little India. This time it was everywhere, from the airport staff to shopkeepers to taxi drivers. On the way back to the airport my driver actually asked me to add my email address to the several others in the back of his notebook. He’s passing them on to his wife and daughter so they can practice their English and learn about different parts of the world, and he insists I am to visit his family next time I am in town.

Frankly, that won’t be soon enough. Singapore really is a great place to visit, but I always seem to be here for only a few hours at a time, and therefore only do the touristy things. Next time round I am determined to take a few days and get out of the city and experience more of the place. It charms really do seem bottomless.

Santa's new transport

2004-12-25T18:53:00.000+10:30

Santa's finally upgraded his transport, but perhaps he should have chosen something a little bigger! Merry Christmas from eebahgum!

eebahgum's recent overhaul

2004-12-18T23:47:00.000+10:30

No DHTML menu at left? Click here to open eebahgum! in a new window.

Over the last two days eebahgum! has undergone a major overhaul. I was very keen to implement categories as a way to arrange my various rants, but such functionality is not native to Blogger as it is to, say, Movable Type. To replicate that concept I've created a number of category pages in a separate blog with similar formatting, and done a lot of linking back to individual post pages. Now when I sit at the keyboard I find myself typing "a href=" without even thinking.

The only immediately obvious change is the floating DHTML menu that you should see to the left of the page which links to each of the category pages, and also gives you a global way of returning 'home'. This is all a bit of a work in progress, but I'm quite happy with the result so far and welcome your feedback.

I've also added a fair amount of new content, especially in the Weird Words archive. Some of you might recognise my weird words as being adaptations of the Word for the Week email series which I wrote a little while back. What the heck, I still like them, and will be posting more of them, as well as new words, regularly.

Now I think it's time for a little lie down.