Banuary

Posted on January 18, 2010
Filed Under Drinks, Life Stuff | Leave a Comment


This year is the second year running where I have joined the club for Banuary, giving up alcohol for 1 month in, well, January (some go all the way and give up snacks and caffeine too).

Now, I do it mainly for the feeling. I miss a couple of ales mid-week, a couple over the weekend, I like getting the appreciation back though. By the end of January last year, I was back to appreciating a decent beer. I went to a pub and ordered after carefully choosing rather than a generic crap beer. This year I’ve even decided if there is the general crap lager I’ll probably even do without, there’s no excuse for serving only generic crap lager when we are brilliant at making very good ales (though that’s a whole other post).

I’m now on the 3rd week when everything changes and everything feels fresher. This is the good bit. Waking up is a little easier and things are a bit brighter. I won’t lie, it isn’t easy to get out of bed in this weather, your head just feels clearer. It’s lovely! I look forward to a good BrewDog ale at the end of it, lovely!

The real Torino

Posted on January 5, 2010
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Many moons ago my ambition was to work on A&R for a record company. Way back in 1996 I decided to apply to some record companies to do work experience. Acid jazz, one of my favourite record labels of the time answered my call and I spent a few weeks working in their warehouse and offices in Hoxton Square. Life began at this point. I ended up going to the Blue Note on the guest list and helping on radio shows run by Eddie Piller who is a bit of a hero of mine. I spent many years going back to them to see how everyone was until I started working, then it became trickier.

Anyway, in this magical time, there was a programme launched to try and get some great talent into the company. One day I stepped into Ed’s office and he had just been listening to a demo tape of a group called Torino. I thought it was a new Jamiroquai track, it was really very good. I went to some live shows by them to promote the band at nights like The Magic Bus. It was exciting. Then, they disappeared. I’ve never quite been sure about the full story, but I think the singer 2E left and there was a cock up with the master tapes leaving the original demo that I had heard with 2 songs. I always listen to these songs and think what could have been. Searching for them usually brings up some other lesser group with the same name. Oh well.

Torino – Sun is on my mind:

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(15 years of lost and found rarities)

Torino – It don’t bother me:

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(Totally Wired Series 2 Vol 2)

That is some sweet Chrome!

Posted on December 21, 2009
Filed Under Internet Stuff | Leave a Comment

I’ve started using Google Chrome. There, I said it. I’ve been dabbling with it a little at work, but this weekend, I decided to try it for a bit at home, see what it’s like. I have to say I like it a lot!

I, like a lot of web addicts out there am a Firefox user. I’ve loved Mozilla’s finest for a good few years now since version 0.5. But since version 3.0, it’s become a little clunky. The memory leaks (usually reaching 249MB, but going up to 1GB of memory at times), the UI staying more or less the same. When I use Safari on the Mac it feels slick and the Javascript runs like a…. very fast thing.

The speed of Chrome is the biggest good point, you feel like it is reacting quickly with little fuss. You know it has been built from the ground up. But there are some slick features which are barely worth noting, but extensions can be installed without restarting etc. The browser is a very important piece of software, so it should be slick and advanced, but without the bloat. This is the issue (among issues with standards) IE has, which lags behind the competition for speed now.

Chrome doesn’t have the full extensibility of Firefox yet, so Firefox will remain my browser of choice for dev at work. Now, I hope Firefox 3.6 or 4.0 will bare some of the good stuff and get slicker. Till then, Chrome, please stand up!

Apple’s Passion

Posted on November 4, 2009
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As you may have seen from this blog, I have something of a love hate relationship with Apple. I love their stuff, but I hate their anti-competitiveness as they act like Microsoft in the 90s but on a smaller scale yet all the open source evangelists have a Mac. It doesn’t make sense to me why they wouldn’t use Linux. But hey, Apple’s products look great and they do that really damn well.

Now despite that rant above, I also love and respect Apple, the iPhone is quite a thing. Their great designs go from their hardware to their software. And something I greatly respect is passion. It pushes people to do something most wouldn’t have the capacity think of.

Jonathan Ive is one of those guys. I love the fact a Brit does Apple’s designs, I also love his passion. He’s quite a hero of mine, and you watch the video below, and you realise why Apple are so successful. He doesn’t fake that passion, he even forgets himself as he starts on the manufacturing process. Now jumping about on stage as some CEOs do in corporate America isn’t really passion, ladies and gentlemen, I give you, real passion…

Google Streetview conversation

Posted on October 19, 2009
Filed Under Film, Internet Stuff, Stuff | Leave a Comment

I saw this video on College Humour the other day and had to post it. I did wonder what the conversation was like in the Streetview car.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1922981

I’m not looking forward to Flash on my phone

Posted on October 6, 2009
Filed Under Internet Stuff, Mobile, Rants, Technology | Leave a Comment

Phone FrustrationThe recent announcements that Adobe are working on a full version of their Flash platform for mobile is making me jittery. Over the years of developing I have been well aware that Flash, for whatever reason, hogs resources. It uses processor aplenty, battery life, RAM. I’ve even worked on some projects where it has slowed my whole browser environment down to a crawl.

I have a fairly new Macbook at home. Using a fully 100% Flash site usually gets it to warm up, start sweating and the fan starts after a while. Not in a small way mind, but full on “OH CHRIST, THE PROCESSOR IS BLOWING UP”.

On a phone, this will be much worse with the lesser processor, less RAM, less cache, less battery life. It isn’t just the Flash platform that gets me worried though. It’s the actionscripter. I have used a fair amount of Android apps now, some are written with memory in mind. But some hog so much system resource I am forced to close it and uninstall to get my phone to work again. This doesn’t even depend on the complexity of the app. A Flash developer tends not to worry too much about battery life etc. as they predominantly develop for a notebook or desktop, as long as it works there, we’re all good. Not to mention the download needed for assets like the HD background to make it all look nice that the designer wants in there. How will the processor cope with that? The designer cares not for battery life or bandwidth.

So those of you with an iphone, thank your lucky stars that you may never have this issue. You may still have the resource hog applications every now and then, but we all have that.

Why I’m not afraid of my online data

Posted on September 2, 2009
Filed Under Rants, Technology | Leave a Comment

Oops
I’ve just read this: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/02/uk_eu_data_menace/. In a nutshell, it is about a UK government system, which holds all kinds of information about us, being shut down because of a security alert.

This time it isn’t just for UK residents, it’s for residents in the European mainland too. The best part about this quaint story is that it wasn’t that the computer was hacked, that someone broke into the office Mission Impossible style. No, some employee had the key codes on a USB disc and lost it in a pub car park!

I’m still sure there are government offices which send private data by email. Fault of computers? No. Fault of some ignorant government worker? Yes. I still see people hesitant to buy something or sign up to anything online because they are afraid their credit card details or some such may get stolen. Speaking to an Amazon employee at a conference a couple of months ago, she said “we do take security very seriously because we all know that if there is one leak in our system, we’re probably finished”. And I believe her. For Google and Amazon, getting security right is paramount. I doubt they even allow anyone to carry something which would jeopardise the security of the company (of course, i do assume). It’s encrypted to the hilt. Their jobs depend on it.

So, my online data, which really doesn’t have that much about me remains pretty secure on a server, encrypted in a vault somewhere, yet access to the astounding amount of detail the government keeps is dropped in a pub car park. Hell, agents from MI5 have lost laptops with security data on tubes in the past! No, I’m not afraid of my online data, but I am scared crapless by what hapless officials do with the other personal data.

Fizzbin

Posted on July 31, 2009
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Technical SupportI just moved home about 2 weeks ago now. It’s lovely, we’re having a smashing time. In typical “that is so Francis” fashion I had the broadband installed as we moved in. “Fantastic” I thought. But alas the line is noisy etc. and giving me about a 50th of the speed. “No worries” I thought as I started a conversation with my trusty ISP. We tried a few things, none really worked, so I decided to call them. And so the story begins.

It was 12am, I thought “best get this sorted sooner rather than later”, so, slightly drunk, I decided to call. The young lad took me through the steps. He reeled them out “Is the box plugged in and switched on?”, “is the phone line plugged in?”. I closed my eyes and patiently waited until he got through the list of stock questions before getting to the advanced stuff.

Through the easy questions my mind harked back to Scott Hanselmann’s suggestion of Fizzbin. The idea is that it is a Tech Support handshake. Like saying “I know tech, I have checked the obvious problems like the unit being on,I know the lingo”. The conversation could go something more like:

“Hi, Internet Tech Support…what’s your issue?”
“Fizzbin.”
“You have an IP?”
“No. Your DHCP isn’t passing out IPs. Am I banned?”
“Looks like your MAC is xxxx, you’ve been running a torrent?”
“Yes, I’ll stop.”
“Cool. You’re un-banned. Fizzbin.”
“Sweet. Catch you later.”

(Courtesy of Scott H)

Though I fear my technical support guy had no clue about technical stuff. It’s now been elevated to his superiors, whatever that means.

Retro not tacky

Posted on July 7, 2009
Filed Under Music | Leave a Comment

Anyone who has had the pleasure of speaking to me about music while drunk has most probably heard my rant about disco. The short story: disco has gone from the classy days (to sordid days) in the 70s to (a lot of the time) just pure tack. Of course every music form has its tack, but people sometimes hear me say “I play disco at my night” and they immediately think “IT’S FUN TO STAY AT THE YYYYMCA”, and not much else. That’s a big reason why we started our night Better Days almost 6 years ago, to start the classy side of disco, and other forms of old music again. The disco that is good music, associated with class and good times. But that is a whole other story. My point is, while music becomes classic, it can lose the class, and also the meaning it had in those times.

Retro has a tendency to become tacky. A lot of things from the 70s or any other decade are difficult to re-create without seeming out of place or out of time. Some get it right though. I recently went to see Raphael Saadiq at the Jazz Cafe who laid on a great performance from his new album “The way I see it” where he has taken an influence from the Motown days of old and very very slightly updated it. To the point where it looks great again. See what you think below.

Raphael Saadiq – Love That Girl from Artists Den on Vimeo.

That was a Natal move

Posted on June 1, 2009
Filed Under Gaming | 1 Comment

E3 is on at the moment. It’s a big games show which us gamers get to have new technologies and games banded about and then told we can’t have it for another 6-12 months. I keep a bit of an eye on it for new consoles and what is coming out there.

Nintendo have set the bar high with their Wii console. I have heard many reports that even parents of 60+ are taking up the Wii-mote and getting on the race tracks/platform games/baseball etc. I’ve been mainly wondering though, what the competition will do, ‘cos they was always gonna copy this little hum dinger, even if it killed them.

First on the block is Microsoft’s Project Natal, where they have decided to completely take away the controls and allow you to wave about blindly as you try to beat Asteroth or some such back guy. Anyway, check out the video. My question is, will it work properly? Or will there be holes? In any case, I’m happy with my Wii and the original games. It’s just always good to see what the competition is up to. Let’s see what Sony do now.

keep looking »

Dopplr