In the fifth part of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker trilogy, Arthur Dent makes his living among a group of stone-age settlers by utilising the one skill he had that was relevant to that world: sandwich making.
I guess we all have a special skill. But my point in this article is that if you’re a software professional, your special skill (unless you’re stranded on a stone-age planet) should be making software tools.
The sky is falling! EMI have announced that they are to allow distribution of their content without DRM. From next month, you’ll be able to buy albums from iTunes without the digital rights management chains of Apple’s FairPlay and in higher quality (twice the bit-rate). This is clearly good news, and EMIs move can’t help but encourage the other major labels to follow.
Back in November I wrote about my then-new Belkin Wi-Fi Phone for Skype. At the time I was fairly pleased with the concept but less so with the actual implementation.
The phone’s hardware was fine. The unit as a whole was reasonably solid. The buttons were a bit wobbly and the screen was smaller than you might initially think, but there was nothing to complain about too much.
The Catholic Church today caused widespread controversy when it issued a statement urging the Government to overturn a law made two hundred years ago.
Clive Adams, standing outside Saint Johns Cathedral in Norwich, read the statement: “The Catholic Church is unable to comply with the Slave Trade Act, the 1807 Act of Parliament abolishing slavery throughout the British Empire. This law is incompatible with the teachings of the Bible and we cannot in clear conscience operate under such restrictions. We ask the government to consider an opt-out clause in revised legislation.”1 Adams, an unpaid volunteer reporting to Cardinal Michael Osborn, denied that he himself was a slave.
Reading this article by David Pogue reminded me of my own search for a reliable and easy backup solution. I came to a rather different answer so I thought it might be worth detailing a little history, the options I considered and the one I eventually chose.
Ancient History
In the olden days — i.e., going back a couple of years — I split the files into four categories:
The problem is this. To get ADSL you need to have a BT phone line. Yet, except for calling my parents, I don’t really use a land-line phone. This has made using ADSL broadband more expensive than I’d have liked as I had to pay £11 a month for a phone line I don’t make calls with1. Fast forward to last month, when I find that I can get cable broadband without phone or digital TV service.
It slightly bugs me that the first thing a lot of people ask about my photography is what camera I use. I tend to think that it’s the photographer that counts rather than which particular machine you use, but, still, it’s a popular question and so here is the answer.
EOS300D
FEATURES: Reasonably compact (by SLR standards!), simple and quick to use, intelligent feature-set
After my positive experience with the EOS300, this was the obvious choice for my first digital camera. And the first thing to say is that there’s nothing wrong with the 300D, it’s just that…
The premise
I have become increasingly disaffected by Apple’s .Mac service, so much so that when I recently got an email congratulating me for subscribing for another year I immediately went to the website and cancelled.
The background
But before we start going into all the details, what is .Mac? Basically it’s Apple’s on-line services that are geared for Mac users but are also usable by those stuck in the Microsoft world. When I first got my iBook back in 2001 it was called iTools. It had a more limited set of features back then, but that included a something@mac.com email address.
I think, over the years I have left companies for most of the reasons listed in this article. Not that I’m claiming to have always been a “star” employee.
I left my first job mainly for money. My third wins the honour of collecting most of the reasons in the list, but would gain special commendation for management BS (as the article calls it).
It was no surprise that they assumed that more people would leave for money. Most people incorrectly assumed that I left my last job for a pay raise too. The part that rang most true for me was “too challenged”:
Last night we went to see Dylan Moran do stand-up comedy at the Hammersmith Apollo here in London.
Here in the UK he is probably most famous for his role in the sit-com Black Books where he plays, well, pretty much himself it turns out. It’s a version of Moran who works in a book store with Manny (Bill Bailey).
It’s difficult to say much about his show as he doesn’t really tell jokes as such, more a stream of observations. A couple of years ago when I first saw him live his most memorable line was “Children are just small drunks.” This time it was about relationships: “The first time you meet your partner you are generally drunk. Why would you do that? You wouldn’t buy a toaster drunk. It’s too important a decision.”