Mac mini: review July 16, 2008

6 months on I would like to present my humble review of the macmini.

	Mac Mini	My old PC
Boot-up time	39s	50s+
Sounds like a vacuum cleaner	No, silent	Hell yes.
Incredibly small?	Yes	No

Everything else is irrelevent: it’s on the Web.

Holy shit. I just bought a Mac. February 5, 2008

I’ve just done something that surprised me.  It will suprise many of you that know me, too.

Ladies and Gentleman: this weekend, I purchased a Mac.  No, not a mac, a Mac.  What do you think I am?  (Don’t answer that.)

Redmond: when yours truly – lifelong Windoze fanboy – buys a Mac, you should know you’re in the shit.  Obviously not financially – because I only paid you for 1 XP licence and you’re absolutely rolling in cash – but spiritually, metaphorically and potentially in the shit.

I’ll let you know how it goes.  I’d write more now, but I just want to go stare at it and make cooing noises.

Today’s neat-o browser trick August 30, 2007

Next time you’re on a long webpage that you’ll be scrolling down whilst reading…hit the space bar. Neat, huh?

Works with Firefox & Safari. Also Internet Explorer. Meh.

If you love your iPod, set it free. August 29, 2007

I’ve had an ipod for about 18 months. Perhaps surprisingly for a gadget fiend, this was my first mp3 player. Of course I’d been aware of them since the “Rio Player” back in ’99 but I suffer from a laughably protracted gadget decision-making & buying cycle.

Pod and I have had a tempestuous time together – although we have just stumbled upon some stability. A potted relationship history:

• Bought in April 2006 before I started spending my working week away from my mp3 collection.
• Almost instantly sent back due to disappointing sound quality. Remedied through some decent replacement headphones.
• iTunes on the PC was such an absolute travesty that it almost went back again, until I discovered Anapod Explorer which allowed me to negotiate directly with my neatly categorised collection of mp3s rather than having to go via the the mangling medium that is iTunes. Worth the $25 at the time, I felt.

But I was frustrated by my inability to update my ipod from anywhere other than my “home” PC. No good if you’re staying in London all week, ripping entire discographies down from bittorrent using your idiot neighbour’s unsecured Wifi connection. (Yes, I’m speaking to you, Mr Netgear of Kentish Town.) Schlepping my ill-gotten gains back home on a memory stick before being able to update my Pod seemed entirely pointless but unfortunately a necessary exercise.

And then something great happened. I discovered Rockbox.

Rockbox is a completely different operating system for your iPod. (Works on quite a few other mp3 players, too.) It’s been a revelation and I wish I’d seen it sooner.

A summary of benefits:

• A smug sense of satisfaction knowing that I’m well and truly out of the clutches of Steve Jobs and the music lobby. My ipod is now mine and I can do with it what the hell I want.
• The ability to update my mp3 collection from any machine I can cram a USB cable into. Heck, I even store my mp3 ripping software on my ipod in case I want to rip on the road. It just functions like a big phat 60gb USB memory stick.
• Nice fade up/down effect when you pause, un-pause, or turn it off.
• Freedom to play lots of different formats (mp3 & 4, audiophile flac, lovely ogg, even vile wma.)
• It uses folders! Just like my mp3 collection! So whilst I have tidied up the tags, it’s considerably quicker to get to stuff.
• Gapless playback. If you listen only to popular young people’s music, this might not be a problem. But when you’re listening to a Bach Magnificat or an opera the micro-stutter between tracks really irks.
• If you’ve got a microphone, you can use it as a capacious dictaphone that creates mp3s. (Apparently with a decent mic you can do good gig recordings, too.)
• Almost infinitely expandable and update-able.

There are a team of lovely geeks working on Rockbox, even as we speak. It gets better over time. I can update the software easily and for free. Or extend it with many weird and wonderful things – such as a ZX Spectrum emulator. (I played Chuckie Egg on the train this week and it put a proper nostalgic grin on my face.)

A few downsides:

• You can’t play any music you bought off iTunes. But that serves you right for being conned into buying a licence to play rather than the real deal – suckerz!
• It can’t cope with album art as of yet, but that doesn’t really bug me so much.
• The default “skin” is rather ugly, but changing it to something more pleasant is easy. And when you get bored, you can change it again.
• You lose the standard contacts and calendar. I’m sure there are open source replacements but I never used them anyway.

So there you have it. Oh, did I mention you can play Doom, too?

Just. Say. No. August 21, 2007

I’ve been on the BBC iplayer beta programme. This evening I uninstalled it. Here’s why:

1. It was crappy.  It lacks the polish of a professional product such as, say, my GCSE computing project.
2. It was creepy. (Why is it always in my task bar? What the hell is “Kontiki”? Why must I watch this programme in the next 7 days?  Will my computer assplode? Yuk.)
3. It goes against pretty much everything the BBC should stand for. Did any of the nutless goons involved in this project actually read the charter?
4. I can get everything I want from bittorrent. (erm, UKNova anyone?)

The sad/surprising thing is how the iPlayer debacle affected my attitude to the BBC. One month ago I was a staunch advocate of Aunty. Now I’d vote to abolish the licence fee. That’s quite a shift!

Sometimes it is better to do nothing than a bad thing. The whole thing makes me feel all wrong inside. I’m self-hugging right now.

Aunty: you’re dead to me.

Have you been segmented? August 14, 2007

Last night I was roughly segmented by t-mobile. It didn’t feel good, and I’m still cross about it today.

My mobile has been playing up of late and after a few calls to the help centre it transpired that the problem was likely my SIM card. Designed to last only 2-3 years, mine had been doing its job for nearly 7. (Longer than any relationship I’ve been in. I’m clearly too loyal a customer.)

Anyhows, the conversation went a little like this:

t-mobile: “Yes, we’ll send you out a new SIM card. There’s a £10 charge, are you happy with that?”

me: “No, I am not.”

<mandatory 5 seconds pause>

t-mobile: “In that case, I’m happy to inform you that we’ll send you one out as a goodwill gesture.”

Not very well thought through. Although my initial reaction was “whoopee! I saved £10! That’s a nice bottle of Sancerre!” it leaves a nasty taste in my mouth. (t-mobile’s tactics, not the Sancerre.)

Ladies and gentlemen – to absent SIM cards.