Category: Thoughts

Nintendo Europe: Not evil, just irredeemably stupid?

Post author By Stuart
Post date 1st February 2008
No Comments on Nintendo Europe: Not evil, just irredeemably stupid?

There are several things which annoy me about Nintendo right now… amongst them the shameless price-gouging for Virtual Console games, the DRM which prevents you from backing up your saved games from your console to your SD card (what was the thinking behind this one??), the hopelessly slow SD write-speed when you do actually find something that you can copy, the inability to run copied data from the SD card, the lack of any form of online mass-storage support – I could go on.

However, right now, it is Nintendo Europe who are in my cross-hairs – and I’m left wondering exactly what they think they’re playing at.

Technology Thoughts

iCrystal iBall gazing with the iPhone

Post author By Stuart
Post date 10th November 2007
No Comments on iCrystal iBall gazing with the iPhone

So, the iPhone has launched in the UK… to a somewhat mixed reaction.

Technology Thoughts

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard – The good and the bad

Post author By Stuart
Post date 31st October 2007
No Comments on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard – The good and the bad

(Incidentally, how do you write that? “Mac OS X.5” is just wrong, whilst “Mac OS 10.5” isn’t as aesthetically pleasing… oh well, I guess it fits into our multiply-redundant world of “PIN numbers”, “tuna fish”, and “software programs” 🙂

Anyway, on to my initial thoughts on Leopard!

Technology Thoughts

And so the last bastions begin to fall…

Post author By Stuart
Post date 31st October 2007
No Comments on And so the last bastions begin to fall…

The excellent Phoronix have a series of benchmarks of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars on Linux and on Vista… and, using a 512Mb ATI Radeon HD 2900XT with the latest drivers for each, the exact same machine managed a frame rate just over 19% higher on Linux than on Vista!

Thoughts Work

Silent and deadly

It looks as if the roadworks at the top-end of Milton Road are finally complete… the net result seeming to be that where previously there was a lane for traffic headed for Cowley Road, the Business Park, and the Park and Ride and a lane for heading into town, there is instead now but a single lane for all of this traffic. The dual-carriageway to the Science Park seems as unused as ever (I’ve never seen more than three vehicles between both lanes) – but now the queues down that single lane which carry all of the other traffic are enormous. By 10am each day, the queues go right back to the roundabout, so goodness only knows how bad it must be at 9am.

More to the point, it’s downright dangerous: this insane road layout encourages, almost ensures, that people will drive straight down the (empty) left-most Science Park lane, and then try to cut back into the traffic stream between two sets of lights. I guarantee that this will cause an accident sooner rather than later.

Thoughts

Small signs that we’ve definitely got something very wrong…

Post author By Stuart
Post date 31st May 2007
No Comments on Small signs that we’ve definitely got something very wrong…

I was in the local Co-op today, trying to find some fruit juice. There were those which announced on the front of the carton that they were reconstituted from concentrate, and those where you had to read the small-print on the back.

Technology Thoughts

Sony VAIO VGN-N29VN & Vista Business edition

Post author By Stuart
Post date 23rd April 2007
No Comments on Sony VAIO VGN-N29VN & Vista Business edition

Today, two brand new Sony VAIO N29 business laptops running the Business edition of Vista. Herein is chronicled the sad events which followed…

Rants Technology

Vista design mis-features

Windows Vista? Microsoft Windows Vista? Microsoft Vista? What is this operating system’s name? In any case, it still has may niggly or broken features… I’ve noticed several strange behaviors of Vista since installing it to dual-boot on my MacBook Pro.

Computer Games Thoughts

Wii Opera Browser released this morning!!

Post author By Stuart
Post date 12th April 2007
No Comments on Wii Opera Browser released this morning!!

I just thought I’d mention it 😉

The new broswer requires a System Update, then an Application Update of the browser from the Shopping Channel.

The actual browser is (now) a joy to use – the (auto) scaling and scrolling work perfectly, there are no black borders, and the control bar can either auto-hide and be manually toggled. The entire UI is much-streamlined too.

Technology Thoughts

“Now, I am become Solaris, the destroyer of efficient coding”

Post author By Stuart
Post date 4th April 2007
No Comments on “Now, I am become Solaris, the destroyer of efficient coding”

A couple of weeks ago I attended the OpenSolaris stream of the Sun Microsystems’ “Tech Days 2007” developers conference in London (actually in a church at Westminster, just across from the houses of commons. In fact, whilst I was there I saw David Blunket being taken for a walk by his minder. His dog was galavanting around freely. This was also when the protesters were gathered outside trying to influence the vote over whether Britain should renew her Trident Missile system – and what a surprising eloquent, friendly, and outgoing group of people they were).