May 2nd, 2010

Living in the past

May 2nd, 2010

One of the great things about video rental services like Netflix and Lovefilm is the easy access to TV favourites from the past. Even better, you don’t have to buy a whole series if you find the first disk a disappointment.

Rose and I have always liked Ultraviolet, a modern vampire miniseries from the late 90s, and the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes adaptations from the 80s.

Now we’re going further back: we’re currently half-way through Danger UXB – wonderful stuff – and are looking forward to Wings, of which I have only the vaguest childhood memories beyond the good theme music. Actually, the end of the eighties was about when I stopped watching TV, so I have a lot of catching up to do. Any other recommendations?

Sometimes I wonder about the wisdom of revisiting these. Will Blake’s 7, a favourite of its time, and roughly contemporary with Star Wars, stand up to several evenings’ watching when the cheapness of the BBC’s special effects is viewed through modern eyes?

Ah well… if things prove disappointing in outer space, there’s always All Creatures Great and Small…

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April 28th, 2010
April 27th, 2010

The Foggy, Foggy Dew

April 27th, 2010

As seen last week by the doggy, doggy few.

The Cam at Grantchester

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The Face and Tripod

April 27th, 2010

I met Brian Robinson at a local function a little while ago and enjoyed talking to him. Originally an actor, he’s now a coach of speaking and communications skills.

Brian’s written a book, called The Face & Tripod. No, it’s not the name of a pub. You’ll need to read it to know why it’s called that. This book, ‘A simple guide to making The Business Speech’, is full of useful thoughts and comes recommended.

Only sixty-something pages long, it may seem rather pricey for such a slim volume. But it’s wonderfully compact… you could pay the same for something which said less, was less enjoyable to read, and had a lot more padding. And he’ll give you a nice discount if you mention my name…

Info about Brian and the book can be found here. Definitely recommended.

Disclaimer: I have no interest in this other than as an impressed and happy reader. I admit, though, that I didn’t pay for my copy… but I plan to buy the sequel should it ever appear.

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April 25th, 2010

Xauth Overload

April 25th, 2010

The Story Of X:

  • In the beginning was xauth, a command-line utility that let you set which machines and users had authority to connect to your X windows display.
  • Then there was XAUTH, part of the authentication mechanism in IPSec secure connections.
  • xAuth, on the other hand, is variation on the OAuth protocol. It’s being proposed by Twitter as a more convenient way for apps to authenticate with online services.
  • And now we have XAuth, a platform developed by Meebo to allow one website to see which other online services you might be logged into.

Come on guys! It’s time to start using some other letters!

Otherwise, we’ll have to think of a way of pronouncing the different capitalisations, so that when geeks say to each other over coffee, “Why don’t we just use x-auth?”, they don’t then all go and implement incompatible things…

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April 24th, 2010

Ex-books and eBooks

April 24th, 2010

Two rambling thoughts this morning about ebooks.

Mmm… an aside, before I’ve even started: How should I capitalise or hyphenate e-book? Quentin’s Law of Technological Pervasiveness says that a (non-proprietary) technology has been truly successful when it’s no longer capitalised. There are those who insist that ‘internet’ should still be ‘Internet’ but I don’t tend to bother, any more than I would talk about the Electricity Grid… now, where were we? Ah yes…

  1. Unlike their predecessors, e-books have no real reason to go out of print. This is encouraging if you’re an author who has poured years of your life into a work and can now take comfort in the idea that it will always be accessible, even if only a few continue to read it.
  2. Many publishers have made downloadable versions of their books freely available, confident in the knowledge that most people, if they like more than a chapter or so, will splash out for the paper version because it’s so much nicer than reading on screen. Will the advent of the iPad and similar, really rather nice, portable PDF viewers put an end to this practice?

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April 9th, 2010

Early multitouch input device

April 9th, 2010

A couple of days ago I had the pleasure of meeting Walter Taucher. Among other things in his Seattle office, he has a card-punch machine from the thirties.

Yes, kids, the connection between your keyboard and your computer used to be, not a USB cable, but a stack of cards that you’d carry across the campus to the computer building. This was the thing that punched the cards. Part of the intrigue for me was that this came from a company we know well, but which now has a rather different logo.



The machine still works, apparently…

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April 7th, 2010

The Times, they are a-fellin’

April 7th, 2010

There’s a widely quoted trivia fact on the web: that the publication of a typical Sunday edition of the New York Times takes 63,000 trees.

Wow. That’s pretty striking number, if it’s right. But does anyone have a source for it?

There are about 1.5M subscribers to the Sunday edition, so I’m guessing they sell about 2M copies in all. That means a single tree gives you only about 32 copies. Does that sound right? The paper is pretty bulky on a Sunday, but still… I don’t think the economics would work out if that were the case. How much does a tree cost?

Of course, they may be very small trees…

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April 4th, 2010

Coffee Table Computing

April 4th, 2010

Coffee Table computing

Apple has created a new kind of device – the coffee-table computer. This is not to say that it isn’t an incredibly valuable tool for day-to-day life, but some of the early apps which are appearing for the iPad are simply capitalising on the fact that it is just a beautiful medium for displaying content, in its full-screen, uncluttered simplicity.

The Elements is a perfect example (and yes, it does include Tom Lehrer’s song), as is the Guardian Eyewitness app which is a glorious showcase of the paper’s photographers’ work. They’re both examples of things that would previously have been attempted using large-format hardback books (which wouldn’t have included music and video).

I have no doubt that there will be many more to come…

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Ihad a little iPad…

April 4th, 2010

This post is here to tell you little more than:

  • I’m in Seattle
  • I have an iPad
  • It’s lovely
  • I’m using it to write this post

Things that I’ve found particularly pleasing in the very brief time I’ve had it include the fact that the keyboard, in landscape mode, is very much better than I would have imagined: I’ve brought a Bluetooth keyboard over with me but I think I may not use it much. Rose’s books are available on the iBooks store. And the Kindle app is already iPad enabled.

Lots of fun but I’m jet lagged and need to go to bed. I’ll try not to take it with me…

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March 31st, 2010

The Mistaken Wife

March 31st, 2010

Yes, I know all the jokes about “anybody who would marry Quentin…”

This to let you know, gentle reader, that Rose’s book of that name, the third in the Mary Finch series, is officially published tomorrow. We’re having a launch party tonight…

The Mistaken Wife

However, rumour has it that it’s already available in certain fine bookshops – Waterstones in Cambridge being an example – and you can also find it at the usual online booksellers. Readers in North America will need to order from the UK, or wait until the US edition is published in the autumn…

Links and more information at RoseMelikan.com…

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