Stuart's Weblog

Feb 23 2007

krunckle-crunch whump

The back-box and exhaust pipe fell off my car on the way to work this morning… it’s obviously not going to be my day <sigh>

(I think the driver behind me was surprised, though!)

In other news, the renovations on my house continue apace: The kitchen wall is down, the plaster has been removed from external ground-floor rooms to a height of 1m, and the electricians are about ready to kill the carpenters for making too much noise!

By Stuart • Life 0

Jan 29 2007

Microsoft hates you

Well, it’s official. Proof, if ever proof were needed, that Microsoft really hates you. Or, at least, cares so little for you that it’s willing to not only severly limit what you’re able to do, but that it also wants to waste your time.

Ars Technica reports that the Upgrade edition of Vista, on sale from Tuesday, will only allow upgrades from already installed editions of Windows.

(This contrasts with all previous versions of Windows, where you could simply insert the CD from a previous edition of Windows to allow the upgrade to install)

This makes restoring a working system after some form of failure a much longer process – since two OS need to be installed rather than one.

By Stuart • Technology 1

Dec 8 2006

Moving house!

Well, my home is currently slowly being packed up, ready for moving on Monday (11th December) to my new, bigger, place closer in to Cambridge.

Scary stuff 😉

This does mean that I’m going to be off-line from about now until as long as it takes to arrange ADSL at the new place… admittedly, that means that most readers will see this message after the fact – but at least the RSS feed will get it, and even Google might catch it in time(!)

(Yes, I really should mirror this site to a backup server… or even just relocate artoo, this machine, into my employer’s datacentre on a spare external IP address, if they’d let me)

By Stuart • Life 0

Dec 1 2006

Windows Media Player 11

I was playing with the Windows XP installation (via Bootcamp) on my Mac the other night, and Windows Update offered Windows Media Player 11 as an update.

By Stuart • Technology 0

Dec 1 2006

Bootcamp & Parallels

I currently have three(!) copies of Windows on my Mac Book Pro 😀

I have Windows XP and Windows Vista (or is it now just “Vista”?… it’s the MSDN Home Premium edition, at any rate) running under Parallels, and Windows XP installed via Bootcamp.

The concept (which I may or may not stick with) is to have Windows/Bootcamp available for games, and Parallels for Office and other Windows-only apps.

By Stuart • Technology 0

Nov 29 2006

Dell PowerEdge SC1435 Review

Despite the fact that Intel has the server market practically sown up (in the x86 space), the Pentium 4 architecture is inefficient and inelegant. So, when it came to buying a pair of new servers for infrastructure services, I decided to investigate the AMD-based offerings. From the Tier 1 vendors Dell, IBM, and HP all now have Opteron-based offerings.

By Stuart • Technology 2

Nov 23 2006

Has it really come to this?

Heard just now on E4 – “and coming next on Channel 4 is our new comedy series, Blunder – filled with new catchphrases to learn and love”.

How has British humour descended to the level where the endless repetition of a phrase is considered high comedy?

By Stuart • Rants 0

Nov 21 2006

amazon.co.uk’s Wii allocation disappears in seconds!

Amazon posted that Nintendo’s Wii console could be pre-ordered from today at 9am. The product wasn’t actually listed until about 9:40, at which point it sold out within, literally, seconds. In the time it took to mis-enter my email address once (d’oh!) and then re-enter it correctly, all units had been sold.

I wonder what the size of Amazon’s allocation was?

By Stuart • Computer Games, Rants 0

Nov 20 2006

MacBook Pro: Initial thoughts and impressions
Hardware

Here’s a weird thing: I’ve always thought Apple’s hardware design was excellent. Up until now, all of my laptops have been from Sony (first an SR11k, then a Z1RSP – both from before everyone realised how evil Sony actually are) whose design quality is generally very high (and with excellent keyboards on the models I bought) – so the bar is set very high.

But I don’t think that’s it: It’s Apple’s fault.

By Stuart • Technology, Thoughts 0

Nov 20 2006

MacBook Pro: Initial thoughts and impressions
Ordering & Delivery

So, after months of prevaricating, I finally bit the bullet and ordered myself a shiny new MacBook Pro direct from Apple.