Farewell Bebo

13Jan09

In case anyone thinks I’ve snubbed them on Bebo by removing them as a friend, I haven’t!

I’ve finally grown tired of being socially networked in two places and deleted my account. The reality is that I haven’t actually *done* anything on Bebo for almost a year because it’s far inferior to the Facebook experience.

For those of you who aren’t on Facebook and have “lost” my friendship, unlucky. I suggest you join up or get used to life without me

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The Day the Music Died

07Sep08

I think I put a little too much OOMF in to this morning’s rendition of More Than a Feeling (Boston).

Ordered a replacement one… should be a bit tougher!

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Drum Rocker – Awesome Drums for Rock Band

13Jul08

Oh. My. God. I need these now!

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Tags: RockBand

iPhone 3G – First Impressions

11Jul08

Oops. I did it again. I queued like a geeky idiot in the cold for over 3 hours to get an iPhone 3G… just 8 months after doing the same for the last next best thing.

I arrived at my local O2 store just after 7am this morning to find myself at the end of a 22 person queue. Not a good start. There is something about standing in a queue for something as ultimately inconsequential as a mobile phone at 7am in the morning that seems to amuse passers-by. We all got very funny looks from passing commuters and the uninformed few who stopped and asked what the fuss was about looked at me with a blank, pitiful gaze. They just don’t understand.

When the doors opened at 8.02am the queue has grown to around 50-60 people and the store manager kindly informed us all that they only had 30x 8Gb models and 10x 16Gb models. I really wanted a 16Gb but at that moment, in 23rd place resigned to the fact that I wouldn’t be getting one today.

Then the whole O2 network crashed at about 8.04am. I don’t think the store had processed one activation by this time and the staff were running around not knowing what to do. Eventually we were informed that the sales process would have to proceed the “old fashioned way” using pen and paper. This would mean that some customers would have to come back for their phones, hopefully later that day. Poop.

It also meant that the O2 store were only able to process about 4 people an hour. Double poop.

By this time it was after 9am and I’d invested too much time just to give up. I’m too stubborn for my own good.

10.30am – Success! I’m in the shop. By now the staff were kinda in the flow and some parts of the systems were working. As an upgrader, I only had to give them my number and the rest was sitting around waiting and warming up (it was very cold this morning). I was in the actual store for less than 30mins and walked out with a 8Gb model.

I must have been lucky, because my activation via iTunes worked no problems and I was actually using the glorious 3G wonder by 11.30am.

And what do I think? Well, I’m not sure my opinion matters too much, this thing is obviously going sell by the shed-load. Nevertheless, my ramblings:

1) Look and feel. Don’t know how or why, but it feels slimmer and smaller than the first iPhone. The specifications say they are the same so it must be down to that nice tapered back. The new (plastic – yuk) back is ok – nicer than most phones out there – but it is not nearly as nice as the previous iPhone’s matte metal. It attracts fingerprints like a really powerful fingerprint attracting thing. Lots of wiping required.

2) 3G speeds. Yup, definitely feels faster and snappier than before. The real test of this will be early next week when I’m away on business and will by relying on email via this thing in the absence of WiFi. Strangely my O2 coverage seems to have improved too.

3) 2.0 software. I installed this on my old iPhone last night, so nothing came as a surprise. App Store works perfectly although very few apps worth getting (Bomberman is decent but £4.99).

4) GPS. Doesn’t work in buildings so don’t really know yet. I’ll see if I can find my way home from work this evening with it and report back later.

4) Exchange support. For me, this was a biggie. I’ve been looking forward to using the iPhone as my work-email-device-on-the-move for ages (Exchange IMAP support never really did it for me). Overall, it works as advertised. Setup was a doddle and I’m now synced wirelessly with my work’s Exchange server for Contacts, Email and Calendar. Push email updates have been inconsistent in their instantaneous-ness but they may well be down to network conditions (I imagine a LOT of people are trying this feature out for the first time). All the data is present however and 2-way, wireless syncing is now mine… almost.

There are a couple of issues with Exchange support which, on their own, are no problem, but together make me wonder just how finished Apple’s implementation really is. Firstly, for Contacts on the server with a phone number stored in the “Other” field (it’s a field which Outlook lets you use), that number doesn’t make it’s way across to the iPhone – although it used to when I synced the old fashioned way via iTunes. The contacts list also seems to hang temporarily when you open it – obviously as it communicates with the server.

Secondly, the Calendar. Yikes. More work required I think. Any appointment added to my Calendar from the Outlook side also generates an invitation on the iPhone – even if I didn’t invite anyone! On my first sync I had an invite generated for every event in my calendar, which was very boring to get rid of. Additionally, any event created in Outlook cannot be edited on the iPhone. Madness.

Lastly, a more minor annoyance. Given the fact the Apple are embracing the enterprise environment and seem to be positioning the iPhone as a Blackberry-killer, why-o-why-why can I STILL not forward a contact card to someone? Not by SMS. Not by email. Nada. This is a task which, in Outlook, I do quite frequently yet the iPhone can’t cope.

Still, this probably pales in comparison to the other iPhone missings (MMS, Cut n Paste etc.)

Anyway, it’s almost 6pm on a Friday night. Enough blogging. For now

UPDATE 12/07/08:  Found a clue re: calendar invitation problem – http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1865

UPDATE 13/07/08: Yup, others are having the same problem.

Filed under: Apple, Boredom, IT, Life, Work, iPhone, iPod   |  7 Comments
Tags: Apple, iPhone, iphone3g

Dublin Post Mortem

11May08

Well, it’s been a week since Andy’s Stag Weekend in Dublin and I think I’ve finally recovered.

In short:

1. Dublin is expensive. One bar was almost £5 for a pint of Guinness
2. Guinness does taste better over there. However, I still can’t handle more than 3 pints in my small, delicate stomach.
3. T-bone steaks are awesome. Why don’t restaurants in Aberdeen sell these? I’d have two!
4. It’s a good thing Andy chose a career in law. Nursing is not for him (Sorry Andy).
5. Drinking pints of vodka and Red Bull is a sure-fire way to bankrupt yourself.
6. Downing pints of vodka and Red Bull is a sure-fire way to f*ck your body clock.
7. Haribo is the breakfast of champions.
8. Betting on the dog races is only profitable if you’re bald.
9. RyanAir are the airline of the devil.

Can’t say much about the city’s culture, architecture or anything else really. Probably should go back and give it another chance.

The piccies are online:

http://flickr.com/photos/scottmorrison/sets/72157604984218896/

http://picasaweb.google.com/DNLavery/AndysStagDo

UPDATE 05/06/08

Piccies of the wedding are now up too:

Official Pics

My Pics

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Tags: Booze

Keytards

26Feb08

We’re in the process of changing out a lot of computers at work (the policy is that no employee should have the same machine for >24 months) and we’re buying a lot of Apple kit, mainly because:

1) They now run Windows. This isn’t news, but Bootcamp is now out of beta and slowly allowing Apple hardware to pop up running Windows in various places.

2) They are good value. No really. For £799 inc VAT plus the price of an OEM Windows licence, we can deploy a workstation that is more than ample for 80% of our workforce (20″ iMac). DVD writer, built in webcam, huge HDD’s and a decent resolution display.

3) They are very pretty. No cable mess.

4) I say so

So, coinciding with a recent office reshuffle, I now have a new desk and a nice, new iMac sitting upon it. It’s great. It really is. Except for one thing…

Apple UK keyboards don’t have a hash (#) key. The # symbol happens to be quite important for much of the database-y type work that I do. It’s also causing a few of our non-techie people concern. Our accountant isn’t happy. It’s annoying.

Fortunately, Apple have built in (but not documented very well) the following shortcuts:

• alt + 3 (Under Mac OSX)
• ctrl + alt + 3 (Under Windows XP)

Why do Americans get # but we Brits don’t? Explain!

Filed under: Apple, Work   |  2 Comments

Return of the Mac

21Feb08

Hi there blog fan(s).

Disclosure: this whole post is just an excuse to use a Mark Morrison reference as the title.

So this week, I finally got round to looking at my MacBook Pro which crapped out on Xmas Eve.

At the time, I was so pissed off and busy with other things that I just packed it up and refused to look at it.

Next thing I know, it’s February and I’m still not back up and running. Some simple prodding quickly revealed that my 1st-gen MBP had suffered the fairly common problem of HDD failure. It was approaching it’s 2nd birthday and decided enough was enough.

After spending £50 on DiskWarrior in the hope it could rebuild the drive (it didn’t, but it did help me salvage my photos and iTunes that weren’t backed up – eek!) I had to look at getting it fixed.

In the end, it cost me £244.98 (£90 for a new 120GB HDD, the rest for labour!) at my local Apple authorised service centre to get back up and running. I’m currently going through the seemingly endless list of Mac OSX updates.

I’m now super happy and can finally stop lugging my work Windows laptop home each night . I might even blog more…

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I Love Guitar Hero!

19Dec07

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iSuck

09Nov07

I’m weak minded. I’ve bought the hype. I believe the promises. I’m ignoring the shortcomings. I’m going to (hopefully) buy an iPhone this evening.

I’m not going to the extremes of queuing for hours (or days) to get one. I’ll pop down after work and see what’s going on.

But there is already a problem. My soon-to-be-ex network, Vodafone, have done something naughty. They “lost” my request for a Porting Authorisation Code (PAC, the process that allows me to change networks but keep my number).

How can they have lost it? I did it over a week ago, taking lots of notes:

• I took names and positions of everyone i spoke to. Who all seem to be “unavailable”.
• I had to pay a small admin charge (not quite out of contract yet) by debit card. They took the money and issued me a receipt reference over the phone. Didn’t lose the cash, did they?
• They’ve been phoning me daily ever since to try and retain my custom.

Now this really grinds my gears. It’s obviously an attempt by Vodafone to delay the inevitable – something I’m pretty sure OFCOM would frown upon. All they’ve succeeded in doing is turning an otherwise happy ex-customer in to a rather-pissed-off ex-customer. A shame, because I’ve been an otherwise satisfied Vodafone customer for about 8yrs.

Worse – the delay means that even if I return with an iPhone this evening, the lack of PAC combined with Apple’s fancy at-home activation means I can’t even use it! Disaster!

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Van Halen – Jump!

20Oct07

Back when I used to be in a very successful rock band, I used to make mistakes. No really.

So it came as great comfort to stumble across this clip of Van Halen playing his smash hit “Jump” at a gig recently:

It would appear that some poor roadie set the synths wrong (48K instead of 44.1K). No matter what the guitarist does, it just sounds awful! from here:

I can’t tell which is funnier, this long-hated cheesebag-anthem turned into a much more interesting, atonal mess in front of thousands of paying customers or the hilarious soldiering on of the Van Halens as they look at each other from inside the trainwreck. Eddie tries to transpose on the fly and match the wildly fucked up keyboards but the great thing there is the difference in pitch is non-musical – about 1.5 semitones sharp. So there’s no frets he can choose to fix the problem!

I wish I could blame all my performance on such problems… but I can’t

So I blame John instead

Filed under: Arts, Ground Control, Music, Rock, Van Halen   |  2 Comments