Monthly Archives: January 2005

Movies & TV

Jack is Back in the Driving Seat

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So, pretty much as expected, despite all the pre-series hype about a change of style, by the end of episode 2 of the new series of 24 Jack is literally back in the driving seat of his faithful Ford SUV, chasing down a suspect. This is despite him having been sacked from CTU in the preview, and having been working in an office job in Washington!

The first two episodes were the usual fast paced mix, starting with a big explosion, and including a kidnap, a computer virus, and Jack rushing around and breaking the rules.

If you didn’t manage to catch the first two episodes on Sunday, they are being repeated several times during the week on various Sky channels. Certainly from the first two episodes, series 4 has us just as hooked as the previous series. (Beth said when I started watching that she’d probably go and do some reading – at the end of episode two she was still sat there!)

Computers/Technology

A New Mac Convert?

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The arrival of the Mac Mini seems to have generated a rash of articles discussing switching from a PC to a Mac. However one of the more interesting series of articles are running at AnandTech where back in October they decided to try a Mac for a month, and then after a massive amount of feedback they have now tried a Powerbook in part 2 and moved on to the Mac Mini in part 3. They are pretty in depth articles, from someone who is an experienced PC user, and definitely seems to be a convert.

Incidentally, following on from my historic Mac video post, you can see what Steve Jobs looks like today (post cancer treatment) in a recording of the 2005 Macworld Keynote 0n the Apple site, incluuding the launch of the Mac Mini. If you have problems with the streaming video, a Bit Torrent of the file is also available.

MobLog

BBC Standard Letter

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I finally got a reply from BBC Information to my letter over the Vicar of Dibley on Christmas Day, which I blogged about on the 3rd January.

Pretty much as expected, the letter was a standard effort, which didn’t make sense in reply to what I’d written. It has to be said that the standard letter effect was further enhanced by the fact that the letter had apparent fallen into the top secret Post Office cloning machine, as I had a second, exact duplicate! 😮

Anyway, the general gist of the letter was that they thought the comedy in the show was a good natured depiction of religious life, and also that the Christmas show had the second highest viewing figures of the Christmas season, and relatively few complaints. (It should be remembered that this letter is written after the showing of a certain opera, so it could be argued that on that scale anything is small!!!)

General, MobLog

Chip and Pain

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l came across another odd annoyance with the new Chip and Pin system this morning. We received our first C+P cards this month, but so far only l had got a leter with a PIN, so this morning I phoned the bank. The answer surprised me a bit, in that rather than sending a new PIN, they said that it was intentional. Apparently the PIN’s on the cards are the same, so that I can decide whether to give Beth her PIN. Quite what they expect Beth to do with the card if I don’t, use it as an ice scraper maybe?

Actually, the whole Chip and PIN thing annoys me, especially the misleading way it has been presented. For example, one point to bear in mind is that it is portrayed as more secure due to the PIN being secured on the chip. However, look on the back of the card and there is still the old magnetic strip. To cope with old cash machines, and machines abroad, this still holds the same information as before, including your PIN!

To some extent it is an example of how we often assume that a high tech solution will be a perfect solution. But it only looks good compared to fixing the problems with existing solutions because we don’t know the new problems yet. Chip and PIN seems like a great solution, but as it can’t replace the existing, insecure magnetic stripe, and if experience so far is anything to go by causes problems for many people who forget their PIN’s, is it any better, or has it just replaced one set of problems with another?

Computers/Technology

A Little Bit of History

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In case you hadn’t realised it, yesterday marked 21 years since the very first Macintosh was revealed to the public. In celebration of that, a German media agency, TextLab has restored what is believed to be the only survivng video of the event, described in this article on the Mac Folklore site.

The tape was made off a TV broadcast of the event by Scott Knaster, who has kept the tape for 21 years. The plan is to release a number of clips of the video, however for now, you can get the clips from here. It is interesting to note how Steve Job’s choice of clothes for this sort of event have changed somewhat!

Mac Intro