Another beautiful National Trust property.
In case you’re wondering, it’s pronounced “item”!
Category Archives: General
Content in Kent
Sheep and lambs on the Fairlawne Estate in Kent. They belong, or at least the grass they munch so assiduously belongs, to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
God’s Marbles
This image has been doing the rounds – and I think it’s wonderful. I’m not sure of its origin, so my apologies if I’m violating anybody’s copyright here. Many thanks to Jonathan Jeacocke for showing it to me.
This should help you keep things in perspective…
ETel 07 photos
Friends and family wanting a laugh should have a look here.
Rudyard Kipling’s home
A rear view of Bateman’s.
EMI and Apple lead the way
Excellent news. Starting in May, you’ll be able to buy some higher-quality DRM-free music from iTunes for an extra 30c. This is an EMI intiative – I wonder if the other labels will follow suit.
More info on the BBC and on Apple’s site.
Thanks to Michael for pointing it out.
Picturesque and statuesque
I quite like this chap, seen this morning at Bateman’s, Rudyard Kipling’s former home.
Rose and I had a very pleasant weekend exploring parts of Kent and Sussex. I’ll post a few more pics here over the next few days.
HMV gets a new logo
A temporary one, but I think it’s great… here.
Of course, one should probably take note of the date…
Whizzta?
The core of Microsoft Vista is, by most accounts, a pretty solid operating system, though I can’t speak from any personal experience. In fact, I’ve scarcely had any experience of XP, having abandoned Windows for the Mac about 6 years ago; something I’ve never had cause to regret.
I thought Peter Gutman’s excellent report on how the operating system has been crippled to accommodate the whims of Hollywood was a good reason to maintain my distance. Now it appears that it may not be that good even at copying, renaming or deleting files…
Paper post
It’s nearly a year since I started wondering about this as a way of combining my paper and electronic worlds. Then I came across the Fujitsu ScanSnap scanners, but certain recent events made me consider one more seriously, and after reading enthusiastic reviews by several owners I decided it was worth trying.
The default modus operandi is that you put one or more sheets of whatever size in the hopper, press the Scan button, and you get a timestamped PDF file in the directory of your choice. Very handy. See Fujitsu’s little demo video to get the idea.
Now, I realise it’s a bit unsportsmanlike to push my advantage when you’re probably already reeling from the staggering coolness of it all, but, yes, there’s more. This scanner isn’t the only gadget I’ve acquired recently that deals in PDFs. So I can take what comes from the scanner and copy it straight onto my Sony PRS.
I should have chosen a more subtle paper colour for my example, to make it more readable on a monochrome screen, or done some image processing on it. This was just a simple copy of the PDF.
Anyway, I could now carry the contents of many notebooks with me, if I wanted, in something rather smaller than a single one! Of course, I’d have to introduce my old Moleskines to Madame La Guillotine before I could feed them through the scanner, but it’s worth considering…
Star Trek medicine?
An interesting article in last week’s Economist talks about ‘flu vaccinations. The majority of individuals who have a jab are elderly, for the obvious reason that they are more likely to die from catching ‘flu than the young.
However, as the parents of any small child know, it is the young who bring pestilence into the home. Thereafter, adults spread coughs and sneezes in their workplaces. Vaccinating the young would reduce the spread of flu, thus saving lives.
…
Indeed, if 77% of young people were given jabs, seasonal flu could be all but eliminated. A utilitarian strategy, however, is a top-down affair because it relies on a community-wide programme, rather than on individuals’ choices about whether to get vaccinated.
In other words, as Spock might put it, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. Whether Dr Spock would agree, I could not say!
The only case where it seems likely that people will get themselves vaccinated for the greater good of society is when a pandemic threatens. There, the needs of the one are closely aligned with the needs of the many.
The Grimm Truth
John’s Observer column has a very nice illustration of the problem with current copyright law. As Larry Lessig put it, it’s increasingly formulated to ensure that “…no one can do to the Disney Corporation what Walt Disney did to the Brothers Grimm”.
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