If you’ve struggled with the streaming download trying to watch the Steve Jobs keynote from Macworld, fear not – a podcast of the whole presentation is now available for free from iTunes. Sit back and watch the show that the CEO of Panasonic left CES to attend. Having said that, if you’ve had quite enough iPhone, take a look at this hilarious dig at the ‘iPhone does everything’ line – especially worth it for the punchline on the end. Also, take a look at a product that Apple hasn’t produced themselves, but has been produced by a third-party, a Mac tablet. What is really galling is that they highlight that they haven’t had to do any special software, as MacOS X has all that is required already, it’s just that Apple have never bothered to make one themselves!
Monthly Archives: January 2007
Knowing What You’re Getting Yourself Into
So after a third celebrity walkout from Big Brother this time around, I’m left wondering whether any of the celebs actually bothered to look at tapes of the series before they went in, or read their contracts.
I’ve just watched the latest highlights show, which includes the actual walkout, with Leo Sayer storming out by breaking open a fire door. What was most amazing about it though was quite what a hatchet job the producers did on Sayer. There always seems to be an assumption amongst the celebrities that the show won’t be edited to show them in a bad light, and that they will be treated as celebrities, something that Leo had previously argued with the producers over, even asking to see a copy of his contract. However, the programme shows an awful lot that the celebs don’t expect. For example, although there isn’t a camera in the toilet or shower (there is in the non-celeb version of the show incidentally) there are microphones, so the moments when various celebs head off to the bathroom for what they thing is a private chat, turns up in the highlights show. I’m assuming that Sayer probably thought that his contract arguments in the diary room weren’t going to be shown, but they were there as well. However in a big break with tradition, the highlights show well and truly broke with only showing the world inside the house, and we got quite a long sequence of footage of Sayer outside the house, including him arguing with the producers, and the security guards having to physically restrain him on a number of occasions. Usually on a walkout or escape, aside from maybe a brief shot of the security guards, you don’t see much. This time we saw a lot more, and certianly more than I think Sayer will expect, or appreciate!
Anyway, back to the beginning of tonight’s hatchet job. Towards the start of the show, there was a discussion amongst some of the other celebs about how those celebrities with real talent didn’t discuss it, but those who didn’t have real talent, tended to keep loudly discussing their talent and achievements in order to keep attention. Then within minutes we have more footage of Sayer discussing his various hit records with Jack. There were then also various other sequences of Sayer getting annoyed, before the discussion over clean underwear in the diary room where he said that he wouldn’t be seen washing his underwear on national television, and that he was going to leave through the fire doors. He then stormed out of the diary room, and had two goes at getting the fire doors in the garden open, before taking a broom to prise them open. Then was the most unexpected sequences. Inter-cut with footage of the other housemates discussing his exit you saw Sayer shouting and swearing at the security staff, with the security staff calling for backup from the production team whilst trying to restrain Sayer. The production team then appearing with a camera – that Sayer then went for as he lost it again. He was then taken to stand by a car a short distance from the house, whilst a producer discussed what had happened, however he still had his microphone on, and thanks to the zoom on one of the house cameras, the programme got the whole discussion on tape, including a moment when one of the producers asked him how other of the celebrities were feeling, when Sayer kicked off yet again. Even in the post watershed slot where most of the swearing is left in, there were some things that he said to the various staff involved that were bleeped out. The full, non-bleeped version is now available on YouTube…
So why did they go so far this time? Perhaps because they’re expecting a lot of fallout from angry viewers who spent money trying to vote Leo out? However, it might well be more to do with the previous nights show. Sayer agreed to give an exit interview on the programme – I assume because his management team had advised him how bad he had looked over the past few days. So Davina made various jokes about Leo leaving in a row over underpants, and then Sayer gives a totally calm, collected interview where he jokes that he still had clean underwear, and complains that the towels were too fluffy. He also admits to ‘not watching much TV’ at home – hence why he hasn’t seen the even more controversial Aussie version of the show, and then apologises if he has been a bit rude to any Big Brother staff – until tonight we’d seen him complain in the diary room, and be restrained on his initial exit from the house. Tonight I think was the producers showing as much as they could of what he was apologising for!
Needless to say, from being a favourite to win the show before it began, within the space of a few days, Leo Sayer has probably caused his career no end of difficulties in the future. Some former stars enjoy a bit of a renaissance through the show, Sayer will probably get exactly the opposite. He’s also caused decided problems for the future of the show, since amongst other things his exit has left some of the other celebs in the show – Jermaine Jackson, Dirk Benedict and Shilpa Shetty in particular becoming increasingly uncomfortable, and all of them discussing the possibility of following Sayer out of the show. Alongside this there is witches coven that seems to be forming between Jo, Danielle and Jade, that is squaring up against Shilpa. Behind the coven you have Jack stirring things up (and not much else aside from one notable Big Brother first), and Jermaine giving support to Shilpa.
So are they going to get more walkouts? I’m not sure, if things get out of control between Shilpa and the coven, I can see both Shilpa and Jermaine heading for the exit – and quite how long Dirk the one other non-British celeb stays around if those two go will be difficult to judge too. It will certainly be interesting to see how things go from here as we’re not even halfway through, and especially interesting to see if the producers modify the programme to try and keep the remaining celebs sweet…
Three Screen Development
So this week I got my new machine set up, and have joined the prestigious ranks of three screen software developers. Having said that – it’s not quite the arrangement that Bill Gates has, in that it’s two machines driving the three.
The laptop is pretty obvious on the left, and the primary screen for my new machine is on the right. The screen in the middle is connected to both the laptop (via a VGA cable) and to the new machine via a DVI cable, so I can switch it between the two machines depending on what I’m doing. As I mentioned a few days ago, I’m using Synergy to tie the whole lot together, sharing a single keyboard and mouse, and linking the clipboard on the two machines. It’s not quite as convenient as having all three monitors on a single machine, as you can’t move windows between all the screens, but it is still pretty useful.
Generally I have my e-mail on the laptop screen, and then develop on the two larger screens. This actually threw up and interesting case of ‘to clever by half’ from the graphics card in the new machine. I had the smaller screen on the right plugged into DVI socket number 1, and the widescreen monitor into DVI socket number 2, but it helpfully decided that I really wanted the higher resolution widescreen monitor as my primary screen, and swapped them over in software. Eventually after some digging around I found the relevant settings to switch the right hand screen back to being the primary monitor, leaving me able to swap the centre screen between the laptop and the new machine as required.
Incidentally, with regards to the Vista experiments, the new machine is still generally running Windows XP, primarily because our companies chosen anti-virus software is currently not Vista compatible.
Interesting Insights
Robert X Cringely has some interesting thoughts on the iPhone. Particularly he explores why it is that Apple backed down over calling the Apple TV iTV due to the EyeTV from Elgato, and yet have gone head to head with Cisco over the iPhone. In addition, he also has some thoughts as to why the device isn’t 3G – apparently the Cingular 3G service sells video in RealVideo format – the current setup of the iPhone leaves you with one source for video for the device – the Apple iTunes Store… In amongst all of that, there is an insight into the mind of Apple thanks to a retired physician who wrote a letter to Apple to complain about their attitude, and got a phone call from Steve Jobs in reply…
High Winds + Bin Day
So this morning and last night I had the joy of dealing with the unfortunate combination of high winds and bin day. Whilst it is pretty minor compared to some of the other results of the weather, it still wasn’t an overly fun start to the day, nor greeting for getting home.
As well as being bin day, yesterday was also our recycling day, so all along the street, everybody had their two recycling boxes out. Unlike some councils, our recycling boxes are just open plastic tubs, which proves a bit of a problem for keeping stuff inside them in inclement weather. I came home to find our two boxes emptied and left on the kerb, but in the middle of our drive were two more boxes, surrounded by a large amount of plastic bottles, tin cans and bits of cardboard, with more of the same strewn all across our front garden. I couldn’t actually get onto the drive, so I quickly collected all I could into the boxes, and put them on the kerb too. The recycling collectors, like the bin men, now have a policy of not going onto householders property, so will only collect from the kerbside – this also seems to extend to situations like yesterday, where the boxes have fairly obviously blown over – anything that isn’t in a box at the kerbside is ignored.
Come this morning, the orphaned boxes still hadn’t been claimed, and more than that it was starting to act in the same way as a skip left on the road, as I spotted one of our neighbours chucking more stuff into it. As a result I decided that I’d remove the box from where it was, as any more wind would leave the contents all over our garden again. I picked it up and put it in our garage alongside our boxes, and if nobody comes around to claim them I guess we’ll put them out in two weeks time ready for the next collection.