Troubleshooting tips for iPhone apps

While I've REALLY enjoyed my new iPhone (despite its flaws), one thing you bump into a lot is problematic applications on the phone.

Even the best of programs (like NetNewsWire and Bloomberg) get crashy and it is amazingly common for apps to either freeze up, crash or (to my surprise for an OS X running machine) take down the whole phone entirely.

Often just restarting the app works fine (after a crash) or force quitting it if it has frozen (force quit by pressing and holding - for around 5 or so seconds - the menu button on the bottom of the iPhone).

Sometimes however, this doesn't work and often in the case of a new download you can erroneously (mistakenly, in error?) think that the app is, for a better word, crap. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. A particularly handy to-do app called Zenbe seemed to crash on start-up, then I discovered lots of my apps were crashing. In this case, rebooting the phone often works (and in Zenbe's case it did when other things didn't). Reboot the phone by pressing and holding the power key (the one at the top) until you're prompted to turn it off.

Sometimes, if it's an app you've had on your iPhone for a while, it's best to make sure there are no updates available - most apps are updated regularly. This can be done either on the phone through the App Store or through iTunes by clicking in Applications in the library sidebar and going Check for Updates.

And, if the other reviews on the App Store indicate people are happily using things, the last thing I normally try is to delete the app off the iPhone (press and hold on the app in the menu window until it "jiggles" and click the cross) and off iTunes (select it in the Application list and hit backspace) then download it afresh from the App Store (it will be free if you've purchased it already).

So, to sum up, try:

• restarting the app;
• force quitting the app (if it has frozen);
• rebooting your phone;
• making sure the apps are up-to-date;
  
• deleting the app from both the phone and iTunes and re-downloading.
  

Anyway, NetNewsWire went all problematic on me (which is a pain as it is perfect for the iPhone) and I ended up doing the last thing which got it all working happily again :)

Buying the iPhone 3G

Well, it took a while but I got an iPhone 3G on launch day here in the UK.

I'm not normally one of "those queuing people" but I was on late shift that day and have 2 Carphone Warehouses and 2 O2 stores (the UK partners of Apple) within 100 meters of my flat - did I have anything better to do? Probably not.

The stores opened at 08:02 (a play on the O2 network name) and I headed out just past 7am. The O2 store in Kensington's mall seemed to have the shortest queue so me and my book (Terry Pratchett's Making Money) joined at the end of a queue of about 15-20 (only one of which was a woman).

As the store was the main thoroughfare out of High Street Kensington Station and I worked nearby, I wholly expected to see people I knew walk by (and I did) and in any case I was joined by a colleague who'd decided to come to work early to queue too.

The store opened on time but o2's systems had collapsed under the load of credit checking, checking for existing customers' ability to upgrade, and a wholesale collapse of their activation abilities.

It took about 15 minutes to process 2 people (let in to the store bit by bit) so it took until just after 10 to get my new iPhone 3G 16GB - if you were much further down the queue you would have missed out - the 16GBs were in short supply and we were only lucky that a delivery of 4 more came while we were queuing.

Fortunately we had a good chat in the queue and all the people watching was superb - lots of people going by thrying their hardest not to look curious about why there was a big queue here :)

The customer service was orderly given the circumstances and the store manager did a great job of keeping the queue updated on the availability of the different models. As I neared the front of the queue, the queue went down a bit as people had to rush off to work or left because of the lack of available 16GB models. As I left, mainly women were in the queue - either not fussed with the 16GB version, or maybe just wise enough not to get up early!

Back home, I wasn't expecting the phone to be activated until at least the evening or the following day (as it turned out - after o2's systems were up and down all weekend - it didn't activate until 32 hours later) but fortunately no problems with Apple's servers at that time so I had a fully functioning wifi browsing machine - just no phone.

Supposedly the number transfer from my old network (Orange) will happen by the 16th - 5 days after I gave them the number transfer code. A long time but I have my old phone in the meantime and my iPhone with a temporary number too.

All-in-all, an alright experience - much better than in the US (where Apple's downed serves left quite a few "bricked" iPhones around) and here at Apple stores (where Apple staff weren't used to O2's systems being down).

Why Apple will remain a hardware company (abridged version)

...because it's much harder to make a copy of a iPod, iPhone or Mac than it is to copy a DVD or CD with software on it.

British political idiocy

I had thought David Davis was one of the vaguely capable Tory (Conservative Party) politicians in the UK. He waffled on a bit when he was trying to become the leader of the party a few years back but as a shadow minister he seemed a bit more realistic than many of the party's parliamentarians.

Yesterday however, he resigned from his parliamentary seat to force a by-election - and to fight the by-election on the one topic of his opposition to the 42-day detention law that has just been passed (only barely) through the UK parliament. Given that the seat is probably a safe seat (i.e. he is unlikely to lose) this is just a waste of tax-payers money (I am one and the Tories are suppose to be the ones reducing taxes) just to do a stunt that will not effect anything (if he was serious he'd put in a private member's bill to reverse the law).

I actually agree the law is bad (it increases the time a theoretically innocent person can be held without charge by the police - with the excuse that you may be a terrorist) but waiting until it has been voted in and then pulling a stunt that will have no effect is stupid to say the least.
To make matters worse, the former Sun editor Kelvin Mackenzie is going to contest the by-election against him (itself a bad idea as Davis losing it would be ironic) BUT he's contesting it on the idea that increasing the detention time is good:

"I have been associated with The Sun for 30 years. The Sun is very, very hostile to David Davis because of his 28 day stance and The Sun has always been very up for 42 days and perhaps even 420 days."

Someone should lock him up for 420 days on the suspicion that he is a terrorist (didn't I see him talking to "arabian looking people" and loitering suspiciously around an airport?!). You'd soon see that the original 28 days (which I think was only introduced - and increased to 28 - last year) is a very long time to be incarcerated especially when you're innocent.

We don't need Guantanamo in the United Kingdom, thank you!

The Incredible Hulk 8/10

I saw the new Incredible Hulk at a press preview on Monday and liked it even more than I liked Iron Man.

It had good acting (Edward Norton as David Banner), a good story tightly edited, great special effects that don't look too fake (or I was just so carried along with the story that I didn't notice), and nice touches of humour (a great take on the "don't make me angry" line).

I liked it a lot - seemingly Marvel Studios is doing a good job of making these films now they've taken them in house.

Well worth a look.

We saw trailers for a few more Universal films when we were there and the style in the one for Wanted made me realise that it was by the same guy who did Night Watch and Day Watch so it has the potential to be very cool. Also very keen to see Hancock (with Will Smith) and Hell Boy 2. A lot of fun :)

Firefox's new image icon

Firefox's new image icon
Originally uploaded by escottf.

Firefox (3.0 RC1) introduces a new image icon - the first change I've noticed since Netscape (then Mozilla then Firefox) had the capability to actually display images natively.

Here's a screenshot of the (now subtly greyscale) image icon on my Mac. The missing image (the document with a tear/rip in) has changed too.

Wow, progress!

Actually, the ancient icon has bothered me as Firefox's UI has improved a LOT.

Disasters, disasters

It's interesting (and scary to say just "interesting" when thousands of people are dying) to see these very sad natural disasters in Burma and in China and how the respective (although not necessarily respectable) governments are dealing with the situations.

In Burma we see the authoritarian government (or government thugs depending on how you look at it) restricting access for aid supplies and aid workers. The aid is there, the people who know what to do with it are there. Sadly, next to nobody or nothing can get to the people obviously in need due to the actions of the government. Everyone wonders "why?".

In China however, a country in the news because of the Olympics and Tibet, we have another supposedly authoritarian government jumping into action, putting it's considerable military power to good use sending help immediately to a heavily populated region that needs help (is there ever an earthquake in China with a low death toll?). Even the Premier got straight into a plane and headed straight to the region either to do good or just as a PR stunt - but at least he went. Things seem to be happening.

You kind of expect a corrupt military junta to perform badly (awfully) in situations like this - hence the regional and international diplomatic upset.

You get pleasantly surprised when a firm communist government does a lot of good work and is open about the situation in their country (China used to have media lockdowns in these situations).

Then you get a similar situation to Burma with Hurricane Katrina, and a government who - like the Burmese - sat back and did little or nothing. Instead of a diplomatic outcry the world just looked on in horror and incredulity as a government you'd expect to do things well (they get aid to any country in the world faster than they got aid to New Orleans) failed to act.

Which is worse? A government that can get the resources to act; isn't actually expected to "do good"; and doesn't do what is right or a government that does have the resources to act; is expected to do good (and does for other countries); and sits on their hands?

One hopes that is a reckoning day somewhere for these, for want of a better word, evil governments. It's also nice to see some signs of positive change in other governments.

F-ing hard drive!

I own a MacBook - the original series Core Duo based (therefore already obsolete as it is 32-bit not 64-bit) from June of 2006. Despite problems with it (the Ethernet's never worked but I don't need that and I had to get a new battery) I like it as a laptop although I do think my old laptop - the 12-inch PowerBook G4 - was possibly the best Apple laptop ever (I'm happy that it's gone to a good home - my Mum's).

However, in under 2 years that I've owned it I have suffered 3 hard drive failures - complete failures (head crashes). The deadly sound of a clicking hard drive (yes, I had an Iomega Zip Drive too!). The first just a few months after purchase (replaced on warranty), the second just as the warranty ran out (I did get a second replacement on warranty), and now the third yesterday.

Each failure occurred after a few hours of use on a reasonably flat surface while the computer was still. I've never been one for bumping my laptop around.

Apple must know about these faulty hard drives - there's even been a story or two about them. Despite this, every time I reported my hard drive failure to Apple they sent me a new model of exactly the same hard drive. As mentioned in the article - the techie says if you have one you may as well buy a replacement before you lose data.

Fortunately, I've had backups (thank you SuperDuper and now Time Machine too) - which became more and more important as I owned this MacBook. Apple's discussion boards mention bad luck - I work in Mac technical support and, while you may have platter problems on your hard disks, you rarely have whole drive failures so bad you can't actually access the disk. In an office of a couple of hundred (now aging) Macs, I've probably only seen a full hard drive failure once. Usually it's just having the platter going bad slowly.

This time I didn't try and get my hard drive replaced on warranty - I didn't want another doomed-to-fail duplicate of the ones I'd already received (3 failures in 2 years must be a record) and, it has to be said, I wanted a bigger hard drive. I picked up a Hitachi drive from the local PC World (after the local independent Mac shop tried to assure me that an external hard drive was an internal one), loaded it on, and restored from a 40 day old Time Machine backup. The only painful bit is I now have to load up Windows again as my attempts to back that drive up failed again.

Macs are promoted as places to store your music and your photos. Well, if you do - BACKUP! And if you own a first generation MacBook backup LOTS and preferably replace your hard drive while you can still do it at your leisure - do a Time Machine backup, swap drives, restore from Time Machine backup or do a SuperDuper clone, swap drives, restore from the clone (possibly easier).

Read that story now and check your System Profiler (Apple Menu>About This Mac>More Info then check under Serial ATA drives) to see if you've got the same model hard drive (I think later model MacBooks used different drives). If you do - change!

Curse of the Golden Flower

As mentioned previously, after seeing The Forbidden Kingdom I had a hunger for more Chinese movies and I'd gone DVD shopping. I picked up Curse of the Golden Flower starring Chow Yun Fat and Gong Li.

It proved to be very enjoyable (if not a happy adventure). Oddly, at heart it was the story of a dysfunctional family. Great acting all around (how come Chinese pop singers make the jump to film so much better than English ones?) and lavish production.

The battle scenes reminded me of the comparison to leaders moving chess pieces although, as the battles progressed, you felt it was more like an imperial (and body count lethal) version of rock, paper, scissors. You thought one side was winning (the rock) then the other side would pull out the paper, then the first side would pull out a lethal pair of scissors.

It also made me think more positively of the royal palaces of China (like in the Forbidden City) - suddenly it looked like a killing field much like the entrances to classic castles like Carmarthen (which, when you know how their defences worked are very scary). So much for purely ceremonial.

The film also reminded me of European period dramas with (in a surprise for Chinese dramas) bodice popping (nice bodices).

But it was about a dysfunctional family that came to a rather gruesome finish after almost (oddly) Secrets and Lies style revelations. The only thing I wanted to know is what brought about the poisoning - a kind of chicken and egg situation, or 3rd wife on the way?

Anyway, the DVD came to an end and I was just about to enjoy the DVD extras when I had to sit through another f*&^ing FACT anti-piracy advert - screwing up my viewing pleasure. So, instead of downloading it from the internet, or buying a bootleg copy, I bought a legit version (from HMV - the newly branded Zavvi is such a lame sounding brand, pity they had to drop the Virgin Megastore name) and instead of getting cinematic joy (as I probably would have from the pirated versions) I got a rude, crude, crappily marketed interruption telling me I shouldn't pirate when I'm not. Almost an encouragement to get the illegal copies.

At least mute worked!

The DVD extras were OK though - seeing Chow Yun Fat kidding away (despite his very serious role in the film, you kept expecting him to crack a joke or a charming smile) and the interviews with the other actors and the director. They did awfully well not to mention Gong Li's relationship (for 10 years) with the director when they said they hadn't worked together for 10 years (they stopped working together when they split). Obviously they're real professionals to keep that working OK when they did this film.

I gave it a 8 out of 10.

The Matrix Reloaded - reloaded

I watched the Matrix Reloaded on TV tonight since it was the best thing on (not saying much).

I hated it the first time - in comparison to The Matrix (which I rate highly) it was all style over substance, it looked as if the budget had gone to the directors' heads and it could have done with a bit of editing. I've always thought that the Matrix could have done without the sequels much as Star Wars could have done without the prequels (or at least Episode 1 which sucked in so many ways).

Well, on second viewing, coming from a totally different direction (expecting the worst instead of the best) it proved to be an enjoyable watch (certainly better than a lot of pretenders) although the Agent Smith(s) got on my nerves a bit ("come on, let's get on with the real story please!").

The acting was good (great support cast and give Keanu a break!), the effects have held up very well, the story actually was good...and it had Monica Bellucci (even if under utilised) ;)

I must have seen something in the first viewing though - I gave it a 7 out of 10 and I'd still stick with that (or even through in a half star if that was possible).

Apple isn't perfect at user interface

Apple isn't perfect at user interface
Originally uploaded by escottf.

While I'm a huge Mac fan, I'm certainly not backward in complaining about faults in the Mac OS (even though Windows is more about complaining about what is right).

Here's a good example: Mac users should be well aware that to force quit an application, you go "Apple-Alt-Escape" (or "Command-Option-Escape" if you're a traditionalist). The Menu command shows the keyboard shortcut including 3 symbols that are on my Mac (Apple made) keyboard except for the last symbol which apparently means Escape (or "Esc" on my keyboard). In multiple revisions of OS X, couldn't Apple put a character showing "Esc" into the system font?

While I know the shortcut already, the lack of a correct symbol made using the handy "Complete" command in TextEdit (and many new text applications) hard until I realised what that symbol was.

What the heck is it anyway? A cross between a power button and the symbol for male?

ANZAC Day 2008. Dawn service, London

ANZAC Day 2008. Dawn service, London
Originally uploaded by escottf.

This morning I went to the ANZAC Day dawn service at Hyde Park Corner in London.

It was the first time I'd been to a dawn service since I was in the cub scouts (as far as I can remember).

A thousand or so Kiwis and Aussies defied a stereotype by being both quiet and sober - but seriously, the ceremony was dignified, sober and certainly made you think.

It's a ceremony that has come to mean a lot to the people of New Zealand and Australia - probably (in NZ's case definitely) more important than our national days as the first expedition of the ANZACs (Australia and New Zealand Army Corp) pretty much defined our countries as countries in our own right.

The ceremony also remembers the dead without glorifying war or denigrating the opposition (a number of speeches mention the "enemy" casualties - many former enemies are now firm friends). It makes you hope for the future (and peace) while supporting our current soldiers and respecting their sacrifices and those of their families.

I arrived just after the speeches began (5am) and it was hard to hear the readings but I did see a program after the ceremony and got to read it - it had letters from soldiers - some who lived and some who died at Gallipoli (the battle of Gallipoli started on the 25th of March 1915). Sad but so touchingly human.

I'm glad I made it to the service - it made me also want to go to the service that is held every year at Gallipoli itself.

...although, it made me think (once again) that New Zealand needs a new national anthem. After the vaguely rousing God Save The Queen, and the upbeat Advance Australia Fair, God Defend New Zealand sounds dreary (and not particularly singable) and it is made worse by having it in Maori first (which fewer people know - although it does sound a much better anthem).

While we're at it, when are we going to get the Silver Fern as a flag? An argument has been made that people have fought and died under the existing flag - they fought for our country, our ideals, our people, their families and their lives - NOT our flag.

Preparing for bad times?

The "talking point" the UK Conservative Party is throwing around these days is that the Labour Government has left Britain economically imperilled by "not putting aside money in the good times to prepare for the bad times".

Given the Conservative Party's only common policy in the last 20 years (apart from Europe being evil) is to cut taxes (or give back money to the voters) they wouldn't have either. To the best of my knowledge there hasn't been any concept floated of some kind of UK savings account.

The closest I've seen to something along these lines is the Sovereign Wealth funds (and similar things like New Zealand's Kiwisaver plan) where having a large investment fund works like an insurance policy for bad times - although Singapore looks a bit like they invested badly buying into failing banks effected by the "credit crunch" just to have them recapitalise a few months later.

Forbidden Kingdom

I went to a press screening of The Forbidden Kingdom today in London.

The film's claim to fame is it's the first time Jet Li and Jackie Chan have appeared in the same film together.

It's also based on the Chinese folklore of Monkey which a lot of New Zealanders and Australians grew up with in the classic TV series (queue singing of the theme song "Monkey magic, Monkey magic...") made by the Japanese and dubbed into English.

Despite all that, my hopes weren't high. The movie was actually an American production, with a lot of wire work, and with a (potentially) irritating kid in the lead with a plot aimed at younger people and kids. I went along expecting the worst.

I was pleasantly surprised. We have Jackie Chan back to his most fun - showing off his mischievous "drunken" style of martial arts. His "cheekiness" is superb. Here his age wasn't a liability (he's 54 now and even Jackie Chan needs a break) and he wasn't nearly as "square" as his recent American films. It was worth seeing the film just for him.

Jet Li's main role was quite restrained compared to recent roles but he also starred as the Monkey King - and had a lot of fun with that. I couldn't help wondering if they'd seen the Japanese TV series too.

Like most films of this type we had 2 beautiful Chinese actresses - both who could kick most people's asses. The bad guy was also well done and since it was obviously aimed at a younger audience, his "evilness" wasn't ramped up just to be gruesome (something that should be considered by the directors of most movies) but he did look very competent.

The movie did depend on the (potentially) irritating kid. At an initial look I thought we were going to get the equivalent of Samwise Gamgee trying to learn kung-fu but it turned out Michael Angarano (who has an impressive CV for a 20 year old) was able to act subtly and to look like he might stand a chance in a fight (I don't know how much he trained for this but he looked capable enough at the end). I also liked how his character's name was Jason Tripitikas - having remembered the buddhist priest from the TV show, although that's enough to screw up the sexuality of most kids - the (male) priest was played by a hot looking Japanese actress!

We fortunately didn't get the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe effect where the kids somehow can defeat professional fighters when they haven't got any tangible skills and have just picked up a sword.

The film was good - I'd give it a 7 out of 10 - and is worth going to see (or wait for the DVD). It's good for kids and adults. It made me pop into HMV to pick up a martial arts DVD (oddly no Jackie or Jet - I picked up Chow Yun Fat in Curse of the Golden Flower).

The MacBook Air revisited - with cookies

The MacBook Air reminds me a lot of the original iMac - revolutionary in what it keeps and what it leaves off, a little underpowered, and lacking a nice fast connection (the first iMacs had USB 1 and no FireWire).

The main issue appears to be how much you can keep on it (I do hoard files a bit but the main space fillers on my drive are my iPhoto photos), and if you're not keeping a lot on it - the speed you can access the stuff you have "offline".

I'm still not sure if you can actually boot off the USB 2 bus but the wifi is certainly not a great option for high speed, large data transfers. Booting from USB (or something like the FireWire Target Disk Mode) would certainly make me (a professional Mac troubleshooter - goodness that sounds pretentious!) happier.

The much talked about arrival of the Sun ZFS file system would in theory make a great advance for users of Desktop machines - run out of space, just add a FireWire drive and forget about the rest (no repointing iTunes libraries or shuffling files around). Laptops however are something different. Maybe we need something easy to say what we need on the run or not. Unplug and go - and leave your iTunes library on your attached drive/s knowing that that leaves plenty of space on your MacBook Air (and that your music is probably on your iPod/iPhone).

I like the Air (hard not to when you see it and hold it) but I'm not sure if I can currently dow without the FireWire and (less so) the optical drive.

Is it just me, or are the squirrels watching us

Yes, they may be very good at surveillance techniques (working in teams, running off or looking the other way when you think you've seen them) but... they're there!

;)

Hell is other people

I was reading about the Khmer Rouge today (as you tend to do) and thinking about Hell - or rather, an appropriate hell for the type of people involved in that appalling mess.

You kind of wonder what special hell could be lined up for someone like Pol Pot (or Hitler or Stalin or Cheney). Given that most of those people don't believe in God, hell might come as a bit of a surprise if there is one. But when you think of what punishments might come up - their own seem the best.

For most of them, as they pass into the netherworld the best result would be if they turned up in one of their own prison camps/concentration camps/gulags/Gitmos knowing (unlike most of their victims) that they were trapped, doomed and due a life (death) that was going to be extremely unpleasant to say the least.

That made me think of my own life (no, I don't think I've done anything worthy of a negative article in Wikipedia!) and how all of us might be effected in our own personal hells. From harsh words said in unjustified ways, to people leaving mess knowing cleaners are cleaning up after you, to looking at photos where models pose scantily dressed (as much in women's fashion magazines as men's titillating titles) and in reality they're freezing their butts off, to every aspect of someone "hurting" to make your life easier or more enjoyable, imagine if the "punishment" was to be that person when "reckoning" came.

It certainly gives a view to "treat others as you would want them to treat you". Given everything I've seen on the Internet (or even at the movies), I might have a grim future ahead. Maybe the things I do good (small and large) can counteract some of these things? Are things really about balance?

Very basic guide to newspapers: The page

This is the first post of a very basic attempt to describe how a newspaper gets from nothing to something you hopefully read and enjoy. It may end up in multiple parts if I can get the enthusiasm to finish it! It isn't in any kind of chronological order.

When you look at a newspaper page, you see stories (usually by seeing headlines). Some that you might want to read, some that you might skip over, and occasionally a picture will draw your attention enough to read the caption, if not the story itself.

From a newspaper's point of view, that's a page with boxes on it - text boxes or pictures boxes, or, in the case of plain good design - just coloured boxes. The page layout (where all the boxes of text, etc go) is designed by an Art Desk - yes, they've usually been to art school and everything! (How it's designed is another post.)

A large newspaper, like the one I've worked on, may have had numerous people working on the page you're looking at (not right now, you're reading this blog - sorry for boring you!).

Once the story's reached the page (yes, that's another post too) one person may be editing (checking for spelling mistakes, accuracy, fact checking, good word flow, getting it to fit the available space, making sure they won't be sued, and more) the story itself, someone else might be writing a headline to attract your attention or at least describe what you're going to read (a very important talent), another might be writing all the captions on the pictures on the page, and people making sure the pictures are placed on the page correctly (and in an interesting way). If they have capable software - this may all be happening at the same time in different seats in an office (or in some cases somewhere else).

There's often people checking the work of these people once they've completed it and someone to make sure the page looks perfect (or at least try to) before it is sent off to its next destination (and eventually you).

Depending on the newspaper (daily or weekly, etc) and the type of news (news, features, sport, etc), that page you've read may have taken weeks, days, or even hours to be created. That same page might indulge your attention for a few minutes or you may not even bother to read what may have taken numerous man (person) hours to create. Possibly a good thing?

Shooting stars over London

Shooting stars over London
Originally uploaded by escottf.

For a person who's lived in London for 8 years now, there has to be something about it that keeps me here. For all my raving about how good NZ is to the locals, and all the crap and bad weather London can bring sometimes London can present you with glorious moments.

Today, on a day off, I walked home from Covent Garden to Kensington. After a quick visit to Liberty (I'd seen it a million times but never gone into it), a quirky department store that seems half traditional high class shop and half quirky, off beat, alternative store. Worth a visit, just for the wooden beams.

Then a trip to the Apple Store and a first hand look of the MacBook Air. Many drawbacks but the thinness is magnetic. Endangering wallets everywhere.

But the glorious bit was walking across Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens as the sun sunk into the western sky over Heathrow. Unlike, most days, the flight paths were in reverse meaning we weren't looking at a plane on final approach to Heathrow every 30 seconds - just an occasional small jet coming in to land at London City.

London's buildings were in a golden glow, the traffic like the sound of surf on a beach in the distance. Long distance flights leaving glowing vapour trails high above the city.

Things that p*&s me off - part 1

There's many things that p*&s me off but I suppose I can start with a select few:

• Since this is online - the New York Times. It's a great paper, a great website, but do I really need a pop up definition of every word I click on in an article? Maybe the NY Times thinks Americans can't spell? Well...


• Car drivers that don't indicate their turns - or if they do, they do it right as they are turning. How hard is it? Grrrr! Related group - who are these idiots that get hit by trains at level crossings? Usually having ignored flashing lights, ringing bells and sometimes driving around the barriers - what are these people like driving in cities? "Oooh, look at those pretty lights!" [If you want to commit suicide, do it where you're not going to stop a train full of travellers - suicide should be solitary]


• Overall group - British plumbing. Careful flat searching can avoid this but Britain seems to have a lack of: reliably flushing toilets (a button flush? How hard is this?!); water pressure in taps (and notably showers); a lack of mixer taps (and some that look like them but don't actually mix!); crappy electrical in-shower heating (power shower my foot!); and unreliable water heating. How hard is it to have a good shower here?! [touch wood, my flat seems OK at the moment]


• People who use the speaker phone capability of their mobile phones in public. Not only do we not want to hear who you're talking to (anything really interesting is probably being whispered into a phone) but it's a speaker phone - you don't need to speak louder - that's the point of a telephone!


• British bureaucracy (well, some noticeable examples of it) that, by default, will say no to any question if they don't know the answer rather than finding out if they can say yes. If you don't know, say so and find out. Rare but notable exception - the Post Office, despite being unglamorous, usually seems to actually have lots of answers (and help) once you've made it to the front of the queue.


• Tourists who come to London and complain about the weather - if you want sun go to Greece.

I'll need to post a things that make me smile to balance this :)

Feminism

It has been said that as soon as men and women are truly equal there will be no need for feminists - kind of like how China isn't keen on revolutionaries as they're supposed to be the revolution. The common view is that the opposite of feminist is a chauvinist (I'm sure the dictionary wouldn't approve) but we can do without them now really.

While some countries have appalling equality (and I hope we do get equality - although that doesn't mean men can't be men and women women - or women men and men women, etc, etc) most western countries aren't too bad (although this is a man talking).

As I was walking though Sloane Square and Chelsea (posh and trendy shopping areas in London) I realised that I'd know there was equality when I saw lots of horrendously good looking men walking around with successful (and probably unattractive) women i.e. the reverse of the situation now.

Back to Macs

After my brief dalliance with financial commentary it's back to Macs - yesterday was the annual Macworld keynote speech by Steve Jobs.

Some can be letdowns and some can be exciting. This year's seemed to be somewhere in the middle.

Apple seems to be more and more about strategy rather than just releasing cool boxes and software to run on them. The original iPod turned into a major industry irritating the music labels to the point that they've dropped DRM (and they were the only ones to want it) just as a way to spite Apple (which may have very little effect anyway). The Apple TV is turning into something that may be the future of video viewing - or maybe not. Either way, Blue Ray or HD DVD may not necessarily be the future of HD viewing in our homes or on the road.

The big new items from Macworld were movie rentals through iTunes (from all the major studios), the iPhone update (heavily leaked earlier), the Time Capsule (an Airport base station with a hard drive you can back up to), and the MacBook Air.

The MacBook Air looks delicious although it's bigger that I would have thought - pretty much the same depth and width as my existing MacBook but much, much thinner. If you were to look at it entirely on specifications you'd probably buy a MacBook Pro or even a MacBook but if you travel a lot, have another Mac you'll be keeping, and if you just want a simple life - the MacBook Air looks ideal. It'll certain make most Mac users think about buying it.

As a person who troubleshoots Macs for a job, and a person who only has a laptop, there are a number of issues with troubleshooting. It has no optical drive (barring major software updates I've barely used mine in the last year but I did need it when I did) and no Firewire ports (invaluable in helping a sad Mac by booting from a Firewire hard drive).

Despite working in an office full of Macs, if I was to buy the Air I would need to buy the external optical drive. The Macs in my office don't have wifi (yes, they are that old) so I'd want to be able to fix my own Mac in an emergency.

I wonder if the Air can actually boot from that optical drive (if so, that would be new on Macs)?

The Air also suffers from only one USB port. If you charge an iPod, then you can't plug in a camera to take photos off it or anything else for that matter. A simple life is required - or an equally sexy USB hub.

The announcement of the Time Capsule seems to go hand in hand with the Air - a great wireless backup option (Time Machine isn't nearly as convenient for laptop users) although being able to boot from the Time Capsule would be a revelation as you may not be able to boot from anything else in an emergency.

The hard drive in the Air is smallish though (and slow) and as we transfer more of our lives into these machines, I'm seeing an increasing need for a "server" of a sort. Time Capsule may be that (can you partition it so one could be a simple drive and one could be dedicated to Time Machine itself?).

One day I can see that there may be a need to have an iTunes for Macs (no, not for music ON Macs - for the whole Macs). On an iPod that won't fit my music collection (it's not a big collection I've got to admit) I make playlists so I can sync a subset of my library to the iPod so it will fit. I can see the need (and am already archiving stuff off from my existing laptop) to do that on laptops.

Whether the Time Capsule can act as that server or maybe a souped up MacMini could play the role is another question. An ideal world would have a "headless" MacMini (with a huge hard drive) that you could netboot (via wifi) off - now that would be cool. I want that extra storage (and ability to install software) but don't want to buy a keyboard, mouse and screen just for a few occasions - that, and I don't have the space for it.

The iPhone update is a great improvement although, like the update to the iPod Touch, could be seen as delivering what should have been on the iPhone already (texting more than one person at a time is hardly revolutionary). It is good though and the iPhone is still proving a temptation even though I'm in the harder to sell to UK market. Maybe when there's 3G or a newer model?

The movie rentals in iTunes is fundamentally a good idea - and definitely a challenge to the new HD formats and the declining world of shop-front video stores. I can't help thinking it may have arrived too early though. The questions are: how big are the movies to download (especially the HD versions) and how long will the average user take to download them? If they are as enormous as I would expect (especially with the HD versions), it could take hours (if not the whole day) on many DSL connections to download a full movie.

When you normally rent a movie you tend to do it in an opportunist way (go to video store - choose one you think won't bore you to death - go home and watch) - you don't want to have to set the download going and watch it tomorrow. Most people aren't going to get instant satisfaction and they tend to like that.

Who knows how it will go and how will this go in international markets? It takes long enough to get licensing sorted out in the UK (which shares the same movie companies and is a big market that doesn't need language customisation) let alone smaller markets that tend to come at the end of a long slow Apple delivery line (like my native NZ or places with different languages).

It may take a few more years for that to be viable. Then again, Apple always has had an eye on the future.

Buying lemons - banking in the US

I've watched the housing market for years (having been left behind by it, it has to be said) and laughed as people (seemingly everywhere in the world) have insisted that property couldn't go down in price. They justified this in so many ways - stable investment, shortage of houses, huge immigration. But what they never did is realise that like most "fad" markets, it was people investing in a market just because there is a "guaranteed" crazy profit. It may have taken longer for it to happen but just like time shares, calling card collectors (remember them?), and any other seemingly one way market - it burst.

If any idiot can make a profit by doing the same thing as everyone else then that profit will stop. Simple. Just like in any free market, if the barriers to entry in a market are low, anyone making large profits in a market will cease to as competition arrives to take their share of that profit. The housing market is hardly a place of restrictive entry (barring the ridiculous prices now), and certainly not with today's (or rather last year's) credit controls.

I've just read an article where an eminent economist said that the Federal Reserve should admit to its part in causing the credit bubble. A good point but there are a number of other perpetrators out there - unwise investors (one can side with a poor family trying to get a roof over their heads but not a person buying and selling their home every 2 years for the "guaranteed profit" - they should face the possible loss too), governments who do nothing to stop the bubble (why don't they base the property rates on the last sale value of your home - in England they certainly don't), and especially banks.

Banks should know better. Their business is lending. They should know who is a good person to sell a credit card, a loan or a mortgage to better than anyone else. That may not be exactly what a sane person might think (credit card companies seem to love people "on the edge") but it is fairly clear.

However, they have marketed mortgages with ridiculous entry requirements: bad credit history, no saving, little or no down payment and the most serious error of them all (and so far mostly unique to the States) not holding onto the loans themselves. This gave the lenders little reason to care about the quality of the loan. When a huge proportion of lending gets sold onto Fannie Mae or whoever, where's the incentive to make sure you're lending money to good risks?

If it was as simple as that, we'd just watch Fannie Mae implode and watch the US government sink further into the red (with the respective fallout for that), but banks went one better - they repackaged bad loans and sold them on with a top credit rating. Not only does this show that the credit rating agencies ought to be sued into destitution, it show how bad banks are - creating these things - then actually buying them themselves. Not only American banks but supposedly intelligent foreign ones like UBS, Barclays and HSBC.

Now, just to make a few more idiots in the world, the biggest losers of the lot (and if you count monetary performance as the way to measure a business - especially a bank - then the companies who make the worst losses are the worst of the lot) are repackaging themselves in a way. Selling themselves off to rich sovereign wealth sums at billions of dollars a pop.

Is it just me or is selling spectacularly badly run businesses for sums that previously hadn't been thrown around banks a great case of the Emperor's New Clothes again? "Please invest in us - we're spectacularly good at making losses small countries would be scared of, so we're a great bet for your investment dollars."

Maybe the sovereign wealth funds think it's a better option than leaving the money in a US bank...in US currency? Funny world.