You may or may not be convinced that global warming is real, and you may or may not choose to believe that such warming is caused by human activity, but if you're going to deny human-induced climate change the least you can do is have a look at the evidence, as presented here. Once you've read through this lot you'll be familiar with the basic science, know enough to ask sensible questions and be able to dig deeper into the evidence and arguments. If you still don't believe, at least you'll be able to base your disbelief on rational argument. Go on, you know you want to.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
New 500 Word Review - Brasserie Blanc, Portsmouth
It's been a while, but I have at last published another (Brasserie Blanc, Portsmouth) in my occasional series of 500 word reviews. I'm not convinced that making the number of words in the post the defining feature was a good idea, but it's done now and I'll stick with it for a while yet; after all, given the frequency of posts, it's hardly a great problem.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Report by Commission of Investigation into Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin
Report by Commission of Investigation into the handling by Church and State authorities of allegations and suspicions of child abuse against clerics of the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin.
via justice.ie
I've read a little of this report and I don't really want to read any more. I was going to write something critical of the Catholic Church but it all seems rather pointless since the allegations in this report are about as serious as they can get and they don't seem to be affecting the Pope or his senior management team one little bit.
What would we do to any other nation that behaved in this way? Sanctions, travel restrictions and asset-freezes, I think, until the accused were extradited and the organisation's behaviour was modified. Libya paid compensation to the victims of its crimes; when will the Vatican admit responsibility and pay up?
Upgrade to Windows 7 - Almost Complete
I am not a big fan of impulse buying - I like to consider things, weigh the benefits against the costs, investigate alternatives and, eventually, reach a balanced decision. Upgrading my home computer has, therefore, taken quite a while.
The options I considered and rejected include:
- MacBook of some flavour,
- Dell desktop,
- Novatech desktop,
- Novatech barebones system or motherboard bundle for me to build,
- Mesh desktop,
- No change whatsoever,
- Low voltage, low power EEE PC or similar.
Unfortunately, none of these options really gave me what I wanted - a reasonable amount of quad-core power with decent future upgrade options without a wallet-rotting price - so I settled on my tried and tested solution; buy the components from Novatech and assemble them myself. Risky, maybe, and probably more expensive than a vanilla off-the-shelf setup, but pretty much guaranteed to give me everything I wanted.
So how did it go? Well, I bought most of the stuff on Thursday afternoon and, after a quick return to Novatech to change the memory (their website mistakenly said the motherboard required DDR2 instead of DDR3) I stuck it all together on Thursday evening and that's it, job done. There were a couple of dodgy moments, of course, like when I first turned it on and it did absolutely nothing (one power connector less than wholly connected) or when I accidentally activated ACHI (or some similar acronym) and suddenly found that Windows couldn't be found (a quick reinstall of Windows fixed this problem).
Apart from that it was fairly straightforward. Admittedly, confusion over the display cabling led me to spend an hour and a half trying to work out why the outer inch of the display wasn't being used (changing to DVI from HDMI fixed that, no problem) and I have an ongoing issue with the DVD drive (it's IDE so I can only connect one IDE hard-drive instead of two, and the power supply doesn't have a connector for the SATA DVD drive so I can't change to that yet and ditch the IDE one) but, all in all, it's been easy and trouble-free.
Performance? It's pretty good, let down only by the cheap graphics card but as I don't play games I don't really care (and, once the price of DirectX 11 cards has fallen a little more, an upgrade is easy). Windows 7 Home Premium works really well, the quad core AMD processor seems to be sufficiently quick and, so far, I haven't been able to make it misbehave, slow down or stumble, which is a very big improvement over the previous incumbent.
Friday, November 27, 2009
MacBook Air meets bus, bus wins
via engadget.com
Carved from a single piece of aluminium it may be, but bus-proof it is not. This unfortunate MacBook Air probably won't quality for warranty repair but at least it still works. Mostly.
Device spells doom for superbugs - Hurrah!
Researchers have demonstrated a prototype device that can rid hands, feet, or even underarms of bacteria, including the hospital superbug MRSA.
via news.bbc.co.uk
Apparently it works by Quantum and Plasma and other weird physics stuff which I don't really know anything about, but it looks impressive, especially the battery-powered version. Very neat.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Have you ever flown over London at night?
Fly over London at night and you realise just how big the city is. Lit
by the sodium streetlights, it is almost all orange except for the
very centre of the city, where the lights from highrise offices turn
the town white and the buildings themselves hide the roadside lamps. How much power do we consume to light our towns? From the air, it
looks like a lot (particularly in the office blocks), but it's
undeniably striking as you head to Heathrow Airport.
by the sodium streetlights, it is almost all orange except for the
very centre of the city, where the lights from highrise offices turn
the town white and the buildings themselves hide the roadside lamps. How much power do we consume to light our towns? From the air, it
looks like a lot (particularly in the office blocks), but it's
undeniably striking as you head to Heathrow Airport.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Konnie Huq joins Indian campaign to end polio
This crippling disease is now endemic in just four countries - India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.
via news.bbc.co.uk
I haven't the faintest idea who Konnie Huq is, but I like the idea of trying to eliminate Polio. With any luck, it'll go the way of the dodo and smallpox in a couple of years. If we can persuade the anti-vaccination idiots to quieten down, maybe we can get rid of measles as well (I'm not holding my breath).
Thursday, November 19, 2009
iPhone Feature Request - Auto-save of Draft Emails
The stability of the iPhone mail client has improved hugely over the last year (v2.0 was truly awful) and crashes are now fairly rare, but they aren't unknown and it would be nice if draft emails were occasionally saved as a precaution against disaster. They aren't, and frustration results.
iPhone Feature Request - Timezone Support
It's just a little thing, but when I change timezones it would be nice if the phone adjusted the times of my appointments so that reminders popped up at the right time instead of an hour early. My appointments sync from Exchange and should be associated with a particular timezone, so the phone ought to be able to cope with timezone changes, shouldn't it?
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
IPhone Feature Request - Dictionary Editing
There might be an App for this (see previous post to understand why I haven't been able to check for one) but I really want to be able to edit the dictionary in my iPhone, both to add new words and to remove or correct existing entries. Most of the time the iPhone's text correction features work really well, but sometimes there are problems. Let me give you an example: "Market". My phone capitalises the first letter of this word whenever I use it (which is often) and it's somewhat annoying. I don't know why this is, but I suspect a rogue dictionary entry. If anyone knows how to fix this, please let me know. Ta.
iPhone App Store Browsing
I can't believe they haven't fixed this yet. If I'm browsing the App Store on the train and I lose data connection (as happens regularly, but that's a different story) I don't want to be shown this screen! No other applications do this. Imagine trying to write emails or read a cached website, only to have this sort of thing interrupt you every time you pass a large hill or disappear into a railway cutting. Annoying, yes? Well it's a bit bloody annoying when the App Store does it. Come on Apple, get it sorted!
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Cardiff Bay from the St David's Hotel
This is the view from the balcony of our room on the seventh floor, taken during an unusual break in the weather. Mermaid Quay is in the foreground with other stuff behind.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Sharks. Big sharks. Stay out of the water, sort of thing
The BBC have a load of video on their website (like this one, for sharks: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/species/Great_white_shark#p0036vd6) from various nature programs. The Crocodiles are worth hunting out as well.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
RFID - There's an App for that!
Your iPhone could unlock your car, pick up e-coupons at the local mall, and pay for all your supermarket groceries just by laying it on top of the checkout.
via cultofmac.com
I like my iPhone. And I like gadgets, especially if they make life easier. Getting rid of cash would make my life easier, and if my phone could handle Tube payments, airline tickets and conference calls then I'd probably marry it (figuratively speaking, of course).
Eight displays on a single computer? Yes we can!
via engadget.com
I can't imagine anyone but a web developer wanting eight monitors on their desk, but maybe there are people who have always dreamed of panoramic minesweeper. This graphics card is for them.
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Fry and Hitchins humiliate the Catholics
They're sitting ducks, really. Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchins seriously outclass their opponents in this debate on "The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world" (link). The debate has been broadcast on BBC World News but is also available on various video-sharing sites (link - thanks Nick, link). My favourite bit is from Stephen Fry, responding to Ann Widdecombe's frankly pathetic attempts to justify the Church's stance on child-abuse:
And what is the point of the Catholic Church if it says "Oh, well we couldn't know better because nobody else did". Then what are you for?
At the start of the debate, there were 678 For the motion, 1102 Against and 346 Undecided. After the debate the numbers had changed to 268 For, 1876 Against and 34 Undecideds; a rout and a humiliation for the Catholics.
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Ancient knowledge and self-study
A couple of weeks ago I picked up a leaflet advertising courses in self-study of ancient (and presumably rediscovered) knowledge. What an opportunity! Here are the course titles:
1) The Arthurian Cosmic Message; the science of the dragon,
2) The Celtic Mysteries; megalithic monuments, ley lines, and
3) Awakening the Consciousness; self knowledge. Presented by The Centre for the Study of Self-Knowledge (whatever that means), you can attend these introductory lectured for a mere £3.00 each. Just get yourself down yo Southampton Solent University and join in (except that you can't, because the last lecture was last night - I wouldn't want loyal readers wasting their time on this drive.). Unfortunately, there's no website listed so opportunities for further mirth and amusement are sadly limited. If you know anyone who attended, please guide them gently toward appropriate professional help.
1) The Arthurian Cosmic Message; the science of the dragon,
2) The Celtic Mysteries; megalithic monuments, ley lines, and
3) Awakening the Consciousness; self knowledge. Presented by The Centre for the Study of Self-Knowledge (whatever that means), you can attend these introductory lectured for a mere £3.00 each. Just get yourself down yo Southampton Solent University and join in (except that you can't, because the last lecture was last night - I wouldn't want loyal readers wasting their time on this drive.). Unfortunately, there's no website listed so opportunities for further mirth and amusement are sadly limited. If you know anyone who attended, please guide them gently toward appropriate professional help.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Waterloo Bridge, London, this morning
London was nice and warm this morning, blue sky everywhere. These photos were taken on the south side of Waterloo Bridge.
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
iPhone feature request - unread email
On average, I receive about 100 emails in a working day. That's not a huge number, and in Outlook I can filter with Rules then list only Unread messages to reduce this to an manageable level. I don't really want to set email rules on my phone, but with 300+ messages in my Inbox it would be nice to be able to hide the ones I've read. And that's today's feature request; an Inbox that can hide read messages. Thanks.
Sunday, November 01, 2009
What to do...?
I'm sitting in the lounge at David Lloyd Port Solent with a latte and a book on Project Management, trying to work out what to do today. Breakfast first, I think, but then what? As it happens, I've got dozens of things that need doing but all of them require a reasonable amount of effort and I really only feel like sleeping or lieing on the sofa, and I can't see the wife going for either of those "activities". Actually, I know what I need to do; we want to remove the wall between the dining and living rooms, so I'll finish the description of the work so that we can get quotes from builders (there's no way I'm doing it). Anyone know a good builder?
What to do...?
I'm sitting in the lounge at David Lloyd Port Solent with a latte and a book on Project Management, trying to work out what to do today. Breakfast first, I think, but then what? As it happens, I've got dozens of things that need doing but all of them require a reasonable amount of effort and I really only feel like sleeping or lieing on the sofa, and I can't see the wife going for either of those "activities". Actually, I know what I need to do; we want to remove the wall between the dining and living rooms, so I'll finish the description of the work so that we can get quotes from builders (there's no way I'm doing it). Anyone know a good builder?
Quote of the day
"For me religion is something like golf; a comfort and joy to many people across the world but a baffling irrelevance which, without appreciable effort to ignore it on my part, has made absolutely no impact on my life."
(Tim Hayward, Guardian)
(Tim Hayward, Guardian)
Quote of the day
"For me religion is something like golf; a comfort and joy to many people across the world but a baffling irrelevance which, without appreciable effort to ignore it on my part, has made absolutely no impact on my life."
(Tim Hayward, Guardian)
(Tim Hayward, Guardian)
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