So after months of new Flickr users complaining that with their Yahoo ID’s they can’t access the Flickr Mobile site, Flickr have updated the site to allow Yahoo ID’s – and in the process locked out people like me who remained with their original Flickr ID’s. Typical, and another attempt to force people to merge their Flickr and Yahoo accounts. My only hope is that when they inevitably force me to use a Yahoo ID to access the main Flickr site that the woeful disinterest and lack of support from Yahoo I experienced a couple of years ago will have improved, as I’m certainly not keen to trust anything important to them if I don’t have to.
Monthly Archives: November 2006
How Difficult Can It Be?
As you may well know, Office 2007 and Vista will shortly be available to businesses. Thanks to the Microsoft Developers Network, at work we’ve had copies since last week.
Whilst I was away in the USA, two of the other developers on my team parallel installed Office 2007 – although Vista is still limited to non-production machines. Feeling slightly left out, I thought I’d take a look at the new version of Office.
Having said that, I didn’t get far before I hit a snag, my version of ActiveSync. Until now I’ve been quite happily working with version 3.8. Although it was updated to version 4 – indeed I have a copy of version 4 on a machine here, it didn’t give any particular benefit going through the hassle of upgrading. However, looking through the requirements for Office 2007, it needed ActiveSync version 4.
So I went and grabbed the install of the latest version, and set it going. Aside from changing ActiveSync, nothing else was being changed at this point – same version of Outlook on the desktop, same PocketPC with Windows Mobile 2003 SE. The install detected that I was upgrading, no problem I thought…
Seems that it isn’t only MarkSpace that has trouble with synchronising. By the end of the process it had managed to duplicate over 400 entries in my diary, and created a stack of duplicate phone numbers in the contacts. If a system using Microsoft software throughout the process doesn’t work with just upgrading one element, I’m not surprised that third-party solutions struggle. Really, how difficult can it be to get a PDA/Desktop combination that works?
Anyway, based on that experience, plus the somewhat negative feedback from my colleagues about how the new Office interface, whilst being faster with a mouse is a pain to drive with the keyboard, I suspect I’ll be sticking with Office 2003 for the moment, despite some tempting new features. Thankfully using the compatibility tools I can read documents from the new suite as needed.
Simplification and Confusion
Last month I commented on the ongoing disagreement between the Exeter University Evangelical Christian Union and the Student Guild. At that point they were still arguing over being forced to change their name, however since then the story has moved on somewhat, with the Guild having partially suspended the ECU under their equal opportunities policy, since all members were required to sign up to the doctrinal basis, and this contravened the policies of the Student Guild. The ECU are now talking about taking legal action under human rights legislation.
Unfortunately the news items don’t help with clarification by simplifying it down to a disagreement between Christian and non-Christian, whilst in actual fact a number of Christians object to the doctrinal basis – take this discussion of the document by the Anglican Chaplain of Kent University. This quite clearly explains why many Christians take issue with the document, particularly clauses three and six. More importantly that same document explains how those clauses of the doctrinal basis especially diverge from Biblical teaching.
Not surprisingly, the Heaven and Earth show picked it as their panel discussion, so alongside representatives of the Student Guild and the ECU they had Nick Ferrari an outspoken radio presenter on LBC, and Jonathan Bartley, founder and director of Ekklesia, a Christian Think Tank.
What was quite a surprise considering his usual theological positions on a number of matters, and is rather important for the discussion this morning though was that whilst he was a student, Jonathan Bartley was president of the Christian Union at his University. Whilst you can find the same doctrinal basis as all the others on their current site, Bartley didn’t sign the basis, and whose vision of a Christian Union is that it should be broad based and welcoming to all Christians.
It has to be said, during the discussion was not helped in the least by the presence of Nick Ferrari who fairly obviously didn’t have a clue about the underlying basis of the discussion, but as would be expected of someone of his reputation, still waded in with an opinion. The sole basis of his contribution seemed to be that the ECU representative ‘seemed like a nice bloke’ and the rest of them should leave him alone. It has to be said that the ECU did come over as a generally nice bloke, and made a lot of noises about everybody being welcome at their meetings. Again, the discussion didn’t get into much detail of the subtleties, and since Ferrari decided to harangue Bartley when he was trying to make a point querying how the ECU would treat, for example a member of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, it didn’t go much further. In general though I don’t think that there is enough time in this sort of slot to discuss the issues, and all that results is a significant simplification of the issues, and in the end confusion for the viewer. I mean unless they knew more detail, I doubt a viewer would understand why Bartley was backing the Student Guild position.
Interestingly, whilst I can see the point of view of the Student Guild, the ultimate result of the process is going to be even more of a quagmire, as the ECU opinion that this will affect other societies is absolutely right. Looking at the religious societies the same arguments being used against the ECU could equally apply to other religious societies, indeed even political societies would run into problems. To my mind the equal opportunities and anti-discrimination policies have to be operated at a student guild level, but as long as their is balance across the whole guild. For example it should be acceptable for the Conservative Society to insist that all members must be Conservative, and not allow Labour party supporters to join, but there should be a Labour Society to balance it. In terms of the situation with the ECU, as long as they are not denying the rights of other Christian societies to exist, then they should be left to get on with it. Rather than trying to remove the ECU by legal means, those against it should be arguing against what the ECU is representing through arguments such as those in the document from Kent University. Certainly so far they have done so, shown by the fact that the student body has twice voted for the name change to Evangelical Christian Union. Unfortunately if the ECU looses their legal proceedings I suspect that it will be the end for certainly any religious, and probably many political University societies.
In-Flight Movies
If you’ve read my posting about United Airlines you will see that I saw six movies that I wanted to see over the course of my plane journeys. (Well five and two-thirds thanks to an early arrival in London on the way back.)
The films in question were Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, The Lake House, Cars, Lady in the Water and Trust the Man.
Going through each in turn, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was pretty much as expected – an entertaining crowd pleasing romp. Not any sort of life changing movie experience, but pretty entertaining, and very definitely a set up forAt World’s End coming next year. Incidentally, if you see it, make sure you wait around right until the end of the credits – there is one more scene.
My Super Ex-Girlfriend was also a film that lived up to expectations, in that it was amusing in places, but not massively funny. There are moments that were quite funny, but it did get decidedly cheesy, and very schmaltzy at the end. I do think that a lot more could have been done with the whole concept. It passed the time, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it again. Incidentally it was quite a surprise to see Eddie Izzard in it too.
The Lake House was a film I’d heard a lot of discussion about. It is a remake of a Korean film, Il Mare. Both films have a very sci-fi based concept at their heart, with two people communicating through letters posted in a mailbox, but who are in time, two years apart. There are however a couple of key differences between the two films in that the original Korean film remains true to the sci-fi concept, whilst the US version uses it as a starting point, but then changes the bitter-sweet ending to a happy one introducing a great big paradox in the process. Having said that, if you switch off any sci-fi nit-picking tendencies you may have, it is pretty entertaining, and from a romance point of view the US happy ending is definitely feel good. Certainly I think Beth might enjoy it, so I’ll see it again at some point, and I may also check out the Korean original if I can find it (the American DVD version is apparently the Korean film dubbed into Chinese and badly converted).
Cars was, like the other Pixar movies I’ve seen over the years, a really great movie. The plot is essentially a remake of Doc Hollywood with animated cars, so instead ofMichael J Fox being a surgeon doing community service, we have Owen Wilson as a speedway car. There are loads of car related jokes and puns, and even Michael Schumacher turns up briefly. For example at one point in the film the cars go ‘tractor tipping’ with all the tractors behaving like cows in the field… There is also a great sequence in the closing credits with a whole series of scenes from other Pixar movies re-rendered with cars – so it’s a scene from Toy Car Story for example – and I’ll leave you to work out what they’ve done to A Bug’s Life… Definitely one I’ll be picking up on DVD.
Lady in the Water definitely wins the confusion award of the six, and probably benefits from not being watched on a tiny airline screen. Like most of M. Night Shyamalan’s movies there is a lot going on, and a number of layers. However unlike some of his earlier movies, I think you need to be able to follow some of the more complex layers to try and get what is going on. On a first viewing I really think that it didn’t quite work. Unlike other films he has made there was no big twist at the end, and Shyamalan himself had a much bigger acting role in the movie than his previous brief cameo appearances. I suspect that I’ll probably take a look at the DVD, not least because the DVD releases of his movies usually explain a bit better what is going on!
The final movie of the trip was Trust the Man. I’d seen clips of the movie during a couple of TV appearances by Julianne Moore a couple of months ago which I’d thought were quite amusing. The plot focuses on an actress played by Moore, her husband played by David Duchovny, her brother played by Billy Crudup and his long time girlfriend played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. At the opening of the movie, Moore has just taken a stage role, having for a long time been a film actress, and her husband has given up a career in advertising to be a house husband, and her brothers girlfriend is getting increasingly frustrated and wanting to settle down and start a family. As the movie goes on the relationship between Moore and Duchovny becomes increasingly strained, especially when he starts an affair with a recently divorced mother he meets collecting the children from school. I saw about two-thirds of the film during the flight, and in places it is really quite funny. It’s definitely something I intend to get hold of, not least so I can see how it all ends!
United Airlines Feedback
I did my trip to the US on United Airlines, who you may well know were trading under protective bankruptcy until February this year. Not surprisingly they seemed pretty keen to get feedback from their customers over the service – giving out a survey to all the passengers on two of the four flights I was on. Unfortunately they were the two outgoing flights, and my experiences on the way back probably were worth talking about too. So in the spirit of giving feedback my impressions with United…
As I detailed last week we had an interesting time booking the flight thanks to confusion between our US and UK offices, which resulted in a number of phone calls to the United UK call centre – which wasn’t overly helpful in it’s advice. The changes actually made checking in a bit more difficult as the computerised check-in machines refused to allow me to check in and directed me to queue up. The suggestion on the United UK Website that there is an express hand baggage only check-in at the rear of island F at terminal 3 proved to be out of date. Going over I was in a regular economy seat, on a comparatively quiet flight. I had a free seat next to me (and Nick Higham, the BBC media correspondent in the next seat), however I also had someone who wanted to sleep directly in front, so with the 31 inch seat pitch, things were a bit cramped. The plane had seat back screens for entertainment, but unlike some airlines they weren’t adjustable – an issue especially with the person in front of me as with her seat fully reclined, the viewing angle on the LCD screen was such that you couldn’t really see that much.
Compared to our main transatlantic carrier, Air Canada (most often we’re heading for Calgary) the food was a definite improvement. Like many carriers both United and Air Canada offer a hot meal towards the start of the flight, and a snack service towards the end. In the case of Air Canada it is a micro-waved pizza, and to be honest whenever it comes out it usually makes me want to heave. By comparison United produce a little packed lunch type snack, with a filled roll, a packet of crisps and a chocolate bar or biscuit, which from my point of view is a lot more appealing.
Aside from the viewing angle issue, the entertainment was pretty good, with a multi-channel tape based system. The downside is that the system loops round when the cabin crew spot the tape has finished – and only when the longest channel has finished – so on the way out with one film about an hour longer than all the others there was a bit of waiting around. Assuming that the cabin crew rewind the tape promptly, there is time for three movies on the transatlantic flights, and in terms of the selection there was a good choice of new movies across the nine video channels. Certainly I saw six movies that I wanted to see, and there were more listed that I didn’t get to. The main improvement I’d make is to go for a digital video on demand system, as aside from the looping issue with the tape system, the tape was starting to show signs of wear with tracking issues with the picture and sound on some channels. Take a look at this overview of the systems available for examples of airlines that do this.
On the way back I flew in an Economy Plus seat. On the planes used for the transatlantic flights about half the economy cabin was devoted to Economy Plus seats, which were identical to the economy seats, but with four inches extra seat pitch. At check-in in Atlanta, the self-service check-in offered me the option of upgrading to Economy Plus, which I turned down. However I had not previously been allocated a seat, so when the machine produced my boarding card it put me in an Economy Plus seat anyway. Since the flight back was absolutely full, and I had been seated in the middle of a row, the extra legroom was welcome, however in general I wouldn’t pay the extra for the small amount of extra space. Certainly, if you look at some of the prices you pay a lot more for the extra few inches, and compare that Thomas Cook Airlines offer 35 inches of seat pitch as standard to all economy passengers on their flights to Eastern Canada you can see there is quite some variation.
On the ground organisation was generally okay. Washington Dulles airport was particularly chaotic in the United area at the end of concourse A, with multiple flights going from the same gate, and passengers being directed to the correct plane across the tarmac, and a general lack of space at the gates on concourse C. However the building work at the airport seems to imply that these issues are being addressed. The only bit of wrong information came at Atlanta where when I checked in my boarding card listed my departure gate as T15, whilst the information boards displayed the departure gate as T14. When I got to the gate area, the plane actually left from T13, and right up until departure ground staff were having problems with people coming to the wrong gates.
In terms of whether I’d fly United again, probably yes, as they are part of the Star Alliance so I can collect frequent flyer miles for our trips to Canada with them. Having said that, it is the attraction of the frequent flyer miles, rather than anything particularly stand-out about the airline that prompts the yes. In terms of changes that would make me want to fly United in preference to another airline, chief among them would be making all the economy seats economy plus. A look at the Seat Guru comparison page shows that with their 31 inch pitch United are towards the bottom of the pile in terms of space – going for 34 or 35 inches across all economy seats would make a big difference and put them towards the top.
United Airlines 777 originally uploaded by So Cal Metro.