Because geek is cool and clever

I’m quite liking so far October 1, 2010

And so this is my first proper entry with MacJournal and despite the negative feedback I’ve read in the past, I’m actually quite liking it so far.

Camping. The Good, The Bad & The Sweary August 5, 2010

Really enjoying our camping trip. Just a shame that Mad Jock McMad and his family of inbreeds has pitched up next to us. They are obviously homeless because he keeps shouting about the council and swearing endlessly at his wife and young children. So, a tranquil spot with hills and sea views – and a rampant, cursing Glaswegian who thinks being inside a tent renders his abuse private. Heading back tomorrow and then off to Norfolk after the weekend. Crazed Scots please stay away.

Private school June 19, 2010

I send my daughter to a private school. It’s a lovely, wonderful, happy place and every day I love the fact that she is there and in a class with just about 10 other girls.
The school has the most perfect feeling of calm and caring.
Mollie becomes a teenager this year and she has been there since she was four years old. That’s how close it is to her heart. With luck she will be there for her entire education.
I can’t imagine anything better. I was moved around schools quite a bit and it disrupted me more than I realised. That’s probably an excuse but I’ll take it.
So Mollie will be at the one school until she goes to university. I don’t feel she is getting a better education necessarily (although she just came top in her English exams) but I love that she feels happy and included at school. I never did.
That is why I plough most of my salary into her education. It might fail but at least I’ll know I have tried.

An entry from my iPhone June 18, 2010

So I thought I’d try submitting something from my phone. Don’t really know why – I’m quite convinced that it will work – probably just to see how easy it will be.
This just in… it’s easy.
The biggest hassle of all is that I need to get up from my desk, deep within an office that itself is in what must be a lead-lined building as reception is essentially non-existent within.
A quick stroll down the corridor, through reception and out into the exterior sunshine and suddenly I’m on full strength and 3G. Bah.
Right, on with a good day’s work before a few cold ones in front of the England game this evening.
Laters.

Time to rekindle the blog June 18, 2010

I’ve decided to start the blog again. It has lapsed beyond any usefulness over the past year but I’m going to rectify that – starting today.
I enjoy writing and spend rather a lot of my time doing it, so why not inflict submit some of it to a blog?
Topics will, I am sure, vary wildly and may include more stuff about my personal life than I was previously happy to publish so reach for the bookmark button or add me to your RSS reader and we’ll be up and running in no time.
See you on t’other side.

An Arundel Tomb March 6, 2010

Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd -
The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

Travels in ebook land March 2, 2010

The PRS-600 Touch

Wandering around Waterstones waiting for my daughter to finally settle on her choices, the four books I was clutching already feeling like a generous slice of Canadian redwood, I found myself browsing the digital reader display.

They ranged in scale from the humble glorified calculator whose primary function appeared to be aiding and abetting the Scrabble cheat, through a selection of plasticky slivers untroubled by such luxuries as robustness, up to the sleek aluminium allure of the Sony range.

By the time you get to the top models, you’re already looking at considerably more than a year’s spend on paperbacks, even for an avid reader like myself (and, of course, you still have to actually buy the paperless books to put on them).

Still, being a helpless gadget hound, I opted for the Sony PRS-600 – the ‘Touch’ edition. Despite managing to get this far in life without the need to scribble in any book I’ve ever read, suddenly note-taking was a must-have feature.

At home, with my device carefully slotted into its exorbitantly-priced leather enclosure, I set about feeding it its first meal of prose.

Unlike MP3 players, there’s no immediate way to ‘rip’ a book you already own into an ebook but I already have a collection of text and PDF files procured from travels around the internet so they would do as snacks.

The included and dreadfully unstable Sony Reader Library software was replaced by the brilliant Calibre from calibre-book.com and I effortlessly copied and converted content to the device.

Reading on the PRS-600 feels perfectly comfortable and I’ve already devoured a couple of real button pushers on it.
The only dark moment came when I actually purchased a book from WH Smith online.

Stephen Baxter’s latest cost more in digital form than its physical counterpart on Amazon and getting it onto the device required signing up for accounts, OKing agreements and generally way too much more difficulty than simply copying a PDF.

Will I ever need up to 50,000 books in my bag? No. Have I found a need to make any notes? Not yet. Are my wood pulp days behind me?

I have a feeling they probably are.

All aboard for a boring flight December 28, 2009

In light of the recent failed terrorist attack on a US aeroplane, if you have a trip to America planned for the new year, ready yourself for some unpredictable rules being applied at airport check-ins.
According to reports at the time of writing – right between Christmas and New Year – some flights are actually banning the use of electronic gadgetry for the entire duration of the journey.
Apparently the bans are intended to be random but if you’re flight is unlucky enough to be selected, that’s a heck of a long time to go without music, movies or gaming.
It could be time to catch up on some reading so be sure to back plenty of books – those of the old style, mulched tree variety, of course.

Murdoch: he speak with forked tongue October 20, 2009

By now Rupert Murdoch’s campaign to put an end to free online news content has become well-known, having been given countless broadcasting minutes and newspaper inches (not least in this particular column) since the media giant said he intended to start charging to read his websites.

His paid subscription model has yet to begin but almost everybody with a moment’s experience in the web industry is unanimous; this particular genie will not be coaxed or forced back into its bottle. Online brand loyalty is slim and if one site suddenly wants your money to read it, the vast majority of your once regular readership will simply go elsewhere

I think it’s fair to say that most media watchers are expecting Murdoch’s plan – if, indeed, he ever actually goes through with it – to fall flat on it face.

That The Times and Sun newspaper owner is smarting from the current failure of the web advertising revenue business model is hardly surprising, but his recent stance against search engines is a different story and suggests an almost utter ignorance of the internet that is frankly embarrassing.

At the recent World Media Summit in Beijing, Murdoch’s speech attacked Google and its like, calling them ‘kleptomaniacs’ and ‘plagiarists’ for apparently stealing his content.

He was talking, one can only presume, about service such as Google News which display very small snippets of news websites and then – and here’s the crucial bit – link readers to the full article.

The way he complains, it seems that Murdoch is under an impression that search engines simply take all his content and pass it off as their own rather than act as a free signpost to it.

What makes his whining even less credible is that telling Google, Microsoft, Yahoo etc. not to crawl through and index your website is so utterly trivial it is one of the first things any novice website creator learns how to do, let alone the professional developers behind major international newspaper websites. A couple of lines of code added to a special file and you can distance yourself from every search engine on the web.

Let’s be very clear; Murdoch needs search engines a lot more than search engines need Murdoch, a fact he will learn if and when he makes his content subscription only and those services he so derides choose to simply ignore it.

Comments or questions? Read my blog at davidmcmanus.com