Drugs adviser sacked

The UK's chief drugs adviser has been sacked by Home Secretary Alan Johnson, after criticising government policies.

via news.bbc.co.uk

What's the point of hiring an expert on drugs only to fire him when he disagrees with you? That seems rather childish and pretty stupid; if the Government wanted someone to parrot back to them their own believes, why appoint an independent expert? This is another bad move from a Government determined to ignore evidence and reasoned argument in the hunt for positive tabloid headlines.

Posted via web from James's posterous

Monoprice iPhone/iPod Battery Backup: Such a deal

The Monoprice Backup battery pack is the simplest of devices. When your iPhone or iPod is running low on juice, just plug this battery pack into the 30 pin connector.

via tuaw.com

Nice, neat, cheap. What more could you want?

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Windows 7; buy a new computer, or upgrade the old one?

Microsoft have an upgrade advisor program (link) that can tell you if your existing computer meets the requirements for Windows 7 and what sort of issues you might have with drivers and so on. It gives the impression of competence, so now I find I have complicated my decision from "which new computer do I buy" to "can I manage with the existing computer, or should I buy a new one". Damn you Microsoft!

On the subject of new computers, I had a look at Apple's new iMac yesterday at their Southampton store. It is as beautiful in the flesh as it looks in the promotional shots and I am sorely tempted; the mouse and keyboard alone make it worth considering. There are just a couple of things putting me off:

1. Price - at £950 it is rather more expensive than the alternative, which at the moment looks like a mid-range Dell at about £530.
2. Software - I need to be able to run Windows software. Yes, I know about Bootcamp and other technical wizardry, but I like a simple life where I just turn the machine on and it does what I want.
3. Power - the iMac has slower processors, less memory and less storage than the Dell. It might be just as snappy running Snow Leopard as the Dell running Windows 7, but who knows? 

No decisions yet, but I'll probably go for the Dell and Windows 7.

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Tech.view: Microsoft's seventh seal | The Economist

Customers will not be disappointed. Windows 7 is all its unlamented predecessor, Windows Vista, should have been. It does not hog resources anything like as much as Vista did, making it a far sprightlier performer. It will even run on diminutive netbooks that currently have to use leaner Linux or Windows XP operating systems because of Vista’s girth and weight.

via economist.com

Windows 7 might be worth a look. Updates to follow.

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Catholics humiliated by Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry

The problem (from the Catholic point of view) was that the speakers arguing for the Church as a force for good were hopelessly outclassed by two hugely popular, professional performers.

via blogs.telegraph.co.uk

I was at this debate on Monday evening. It was entertaining; Hitchens and Fry made strong, well-presented arguments and essentially destroyed their opponents, roared on by a partisan audience that scented ecclesiastical blood.

The Telegraph's quote isn't accurate, however. The problem wasn't that the debaters were mismatched (although there was clearly an intellectual gulf between the two sides) but that the Catholics had no answer to the attacks of Hitchens and Fry, and presented no compelling counter arguments.

I think it was the child abuse scandals that finally swung the audience. The debate is due to be broadcast on 7th November; watch out for Ann Widdecombe's astonishing explanation for the Church's failure over child abuse.

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Government opens data to public

An ambitious new website that will open up government data to the public will launch in beta, or pilot, form in December.

via news.bbc.co.uk

Free information? It'll be interesting to see what we get. Bring it on!

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Tweetie 2, Sublime iPhone Twitter Client

I took a bit of a break from Twitter while I was on holiday earlier this year (except for publicising my blogs, of course) and then found that I could live without it when I came home; my Tweet frequency dropped accordingly.

Then Tweetie 2 dropped on the App store and, possibly unwisely, I stumped up the modedt fee and had a play.

What can I say? It's not life-changing (after all, it's only a communication client, not world peace) but it is staggeringly good. They've taken Apple's UI and extended it, creating new features that raise the bar in a number of interesting ways that could conceivably make their way into Apple's own Apps at some point.

My favourite, and I know this is a small thing, is that the Refresh function is now activated by dragging down the list of Tweets as if you were exposing new messages. The list then bounces back, refresh triggered, and pulls in the new Tweets. I haven't seen this anywhere else, but I've caught myself trying to do the same thing in Mail, where, of course, it doesn't work.

There are dozens of other new and improved features (far too many to list, and I don't think I've found them all yet) and together they make a great Twitter client and a great App. If you've ever fancied finding out what makes Twitter tick, this is the App and now is the time; join the social revolution!

Long live Twitter!

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Tesco Puts Spotlight On Its Supermarket Shelves

via cultofmac.com

This will only be of interest if you have an iPhone, shop at Tesco and, frankly, are a bit weird. Tesco have launched an app to help you find things in their shops and it seems to work really well (although I haven't actually been to a store to check - that's beyond the call of duty). With this and the self-service checkout you can complete your weekly grocery purchase without speaking to another human being. Progress rolls relentlessly on.

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Leeds Airport; not bad, considering

Ok, so it's fairly small, and the selection of shops and restaurants is fairly limited, but service this morning was quick and there were no hold-ups anywhere. If only Gatwick ran as smoothly.

Almost bought a book at WHSmith called "Queen Victoria, Demon Hunter". High quality fiction if ever I saw it, but I resisted temptation and walked away. I'll get it from Amazon instead when I've finished reading "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies".

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JK Rowling denied top US honour for promoting sorcery

Matt Latimer, former speech writer for President George W Bush, said that some members of his administration believed her books promoted sorcery.

via news.bbc.co.uk

The thing about promoting sorcery, even if you do it deliberately, persuasively and over an extended period of time, is that sorcery doesn't work in the real world, and I think that's an important lesson for anyone interested in Government. The key point is to distinguish between fiction (Harry Potter et al) and fact (the real world, where magic never works and we no longer burn witches); anyone who can't do this deserves quite a lot of sympathy and help.

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Berners-Lee 'sorry' for slashes

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, has confessed that the // in a web address were actually "unnecessary".

via news.bbc.co.uk

I think I can forgive him this minor flaw; the web makes life so much easier in so many ways that I'm not inclined to grumble about such a trivial inconvenience as occasionally having to type a couple of extra characters.

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The view from Waterloo Bridge

The iPhone camera may have its problems, but you can still take moderately interesting photos, even in poor light (I think - I may change my opinion when I've seen these shots on a big screen). These were taken this evening as I hurried to catch the 1905 from Waterloo.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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The Guardian Prevented from Reporting Parliament

What happens when newspapers can't report on Parliament? Well, almost anything. Why gag The Guardian? What is the Government scared of?

The story is here (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/12/guardian-gagged-from-reporting-parliament) if you're interested, and it's worrying enough that you really should be: 

"The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights."

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Restaurant Elevant, Moose and Crocodile

How do you pick restaurants? Reputation, food, value, proximity, ambience and even service might be considerations; on Wednesday evening we choose Elevant (http://www.elevant.ee/en/ - very nice, worth a visit) in Tallinn because they had curried moose on the menu.

I quite like trying strange foods (or, to be precise, the idea of trying strange foods; the dishes themselves are often pretty awful) so curried moose had a certain appeal, being interestingly unusual, but then somebody noticed the Crocodile in Mango Sauce and all thoughts of moose were chased away by thoughts of spicy reptile.

So, you ask, what was it like? The sauce was quite good (although I'm not sure mango is a good match for crocodile), the starters were very tasty, the rice was rather nice. The crocodile itself was fairly tough and tasted a bit like fishy chicken; it wasn't unpleasant, and I finished it, but my colleague's curried moose was definitely more palatable.

So, tip of the day; avoid the croc, choose the moose. Or the wild boar. Or the lamb. Or the chicken. Next time, I'm hoping for curried herring.

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iPhone OS 3.1.2 Now Out

And it's a big update! Well, no, actually it isn't, but it looks like it might be a useful improvement, particularly if you use the phone to make, you know, phone calls. Full details:

iPhone OS 3.1.2 Software Update

This update contains bug fixes and improvements, including the following:

• Resolves sporadic issue that may cause iPhone to not wake from sleep
• Resolves intermittent issue that may interrupt cellular network services until restart
• Fixes bug that could cause occasional crash during video streaming

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Suliko Gruusia Restoran

via suliko.ee

I'm in Tallinn at the moment, and the website of this food outlet (I can't bring myself to call it a restaurant) is quite astonishing. It looks very much as if their translation work was handled by a drunk monkey with a faulty thesaurus and a desire to torture the English language.

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The New Apple TV

It's only a rumour, of course, but the expectation is that Apple will launch new versions of the Apple TV sometime fairly soon; they've dropped the old 40Gb model and reduced the price of the 160Gb version, presumably to clear stock. How are they going to do it? I don't actually know, but the feature set of the existing Apple TV is pretty much identical to that of the iPod Touch, with the obvious exception of the form-specific elements, and maybe Apple could produce a next-gen TV product by marrying the iPhone OS to a decent CPU and a very large hard-drive. 

Would they want to sell apps to customers sitting in front of their TV? I can't see why not, and if they marry this hypothetical product with a decent controller they've got a pretty neat games console and a media centre able to exploit the huge variety of apps and media available through iTunes. It's a compelling idea.

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Wifi-enabled scales; I really need this gadget

From any web browser, or from the free iPhone application supplied by Withings, you can log on and see a rich, relevant view of all of your weight data collected by your scale, with no time limitation and in total confidentiality.

via withings.com

I love the idea of being able to log your weight and view the trends on your phone. I'm going to get one of these things, and I'll let you know how it goes.

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