Last photos of Tallinn for a while

And we're off! Back to the airport for the flight home. No snow this
morning and the sun is out - very nice.

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More pictures from Tallinn

Fairly heavy snow, low temperatures and a decent breeze made Tallinn
quite chilly today. I'm hoping for somewhere warmer on my next
business trip (Malta would be nice) but I suspect I'll get Leeds or
Munich.

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Tallinn by night in the snow

Tallinn is somewhat covered in snow. This shot is a composite panorama taken at night on my iPhone and created by Autostitch.

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Off to Tallinn again

And I seem to have over packed (in part because I'm carrying a reel of coax cable for a colleague) which is rather annoying.

In anticipation of a low-calorie day I have indulged in a large fried breakfast heavily laden with fat; I now feel a little unwell. No food for me at the airport, I think, but there may be time for coffee.

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Strangely back at the Hilton, Stansted Airport

I haven't been here for about five years. I remembered it being a
decent hotel but maybe I've moved on further than the hotel in the
intervening half-decade; the rooms are small and bizarrely smelly, as
if something small and plastic has died in the ventilation and is
being pumped slowly out.

The gym, which only this afternoon prompted muttered curses when I
realised I had forgotten my kit, is tiny; cramped and ill-equipped.
Waiting for dinner, notes to follow, not expecting anything good (I
hadn't planned to eat here but events overtook me and here I am - at
least I'm out of the smelly room for a while).

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Applications for the iPad - image manipulation?

I was demonstrating ColorSplash (an iPhone App that de-saturates your
photos and allows you to paint back the colour with your finger) to my
Dad yesterday when it occurred to me that being able to do this sort
of thing on an iPad with its much bigger screen would be both easier
and faster.

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Pair this with the features in Photogene (another iPhone app for basic image handling) and you've got a pretty neat photo manipulation app that makes use of the iPad's killer hardware feature - the large capacitive touch screen. Suddenly, for the first time since my milk teeth fell out, finger painting sounds fun.

Apple must have anticipated this when they decided to offer the iPad Camera Connection Kit (name explains everything you need to know about the kit) which, I suspect, I'll be buying on day one. The only other thing I'll want to do is transfer images and video from my 4th Gen iPhone (presumably launching in June with a 5Mp camera, a decent lens and a flash, although I will be upgrading even if the camera is unchanged from the 3GS). Happy days!

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For what might I use Apple's iPad?

I have given it some thought and there are basically two things I think I want to be able to do with an iPad that I wouldn't do on a laptop or phone:
1) Buy and read books
2) Subscribe to The Economist or other weekly magazines.

Actually, I already do both of these things on my phone using Stanza for books and the web versions of the magazine but the experience is satisfactory at best - plenty of scope for improvement.

There are some fairly important assumptions being made here:
1) Cost has to be somewhat lower than that of hard copy
2) Access has to be easy (trial versions would be nice) and format usable
3) Ideally magazines would download automatically as soon as they were available - I want to discover the latest issue waiting for me when I turn on the device.

If those assumptions hold (we'll know fairly soon, one way or the other) then I think I'll be queuing up to buy an iPad. If they don't I'll probably get one from Amazon.

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Easy Home Data Storage and Back-up

Video, music, photographs. It's easy to accumulate a lot of data and keeping it all backed up can be a bit tricky. DVDs are cheap but slow and inconvenient, the cloud is convenient but slow and expensive and USB hard drives are fast and mobile but don't offer much redundancy. My solution is a D-Link NAS (this one) and two 1.5Tb hard drives in a RAID array. Nice and fast.

How do I get data onto it? Microsoft have a tool called Sync Toy that works rather well, copying data to and from the NAS. And that's it.

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Another personal best on the treadmill

Good run this morning - moved my 5km personal best from 32:52 to 32:23, so I'm having a good day so far. Now time for breakfast in the gym's lounge.

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Quote of the Day; Heisenberg and the Nazi Nuclear Bomb

"We definitely did not want to get into this bomb business," said Heisenberg. "I wouldn't like to idealize this; we did this also for our personal safety. We thought that the probability that this would lead to atomic bombs during the War was nearly zero. If we had done otherwise, and if many thousand people had been put to work on it and then if nothing had been developed, this could have had extremely disagreeable consequences for us."

via theregister.co.uk

Fantastic quote from Heisenberg, brilliantly demonstrating the risks of alienating your scientific elite; Hitler failed to acquire the bomb in part because he failed to keep his researchers happy and secure. There's a lesson in there for us all.

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SIM with built-in wifi modem

Telefonica and Sagem have embedded a WLAN modem in the SIM card.

via theinquirer.net

Very cool - much better than using Bluetooth to connect to your phone, especially if it's secure. More technological innovation please.

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Spokeless Bicycle: Weird but Technically Impressive

via gizmodo.com

I'm not really sure why they bothered, but some engineering students at Yale have built a spokeless bicycle. Very strange.

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Rohan Jackets; Persistence Rewarded

Earlier in the year I bought a Cityscape jacket from Rohan in Chichester with the intention of pairing it with their Inner Flame jacket to deliver "uncompromising four season protection". Unfortunately they didn't have one in stock and as the weeks went by (no stock on their website or at their stores in Covent Garden or Leeds, and no stock at independent retailers) I was starting to lose hope, wondering if I might have to live with the compromise (an ill-fitting fleece worn inside the Cityscape - very annoying) until the next winter season.

Then, as luck would have it, the wife was shopping in Chichester and popped back to the Rohan store, just on the off-chance. They didn't actually have one available, but there were holding exactly the right jacket for another customer and they'd give me first refusal if he decided not to take it. Bingo. Yesterday we picked it up, and now I have my uncompromising four season protection and I'm looking for somewhere to try it. Very cool.

Actually, it's very warm, very light, comfortable and convenient; definitely worth a look if you're after a good water/wind-proof jacket. And next week I'm off to Tallinn where it'll be nice and chilly and I'm rather expecting to be comfortably warm.

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Microsoft Office 2010 Beta - Worth a Look

Possibly not the most exciting topic, but I've been using Office 2010 Beta for a couple of days and it's really very good. It's fast, stable and easy to use and the stupid office button from 2007 has gone, replaced by a significantly better File menu. You can download it here.

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How fast can your phone data go? 300Mbps?

LTE is to 3G what 3G was to EDGE, theoretically offering transfer rates of between 140 to 300Mbps

via cultofmac.com

I'm deeply sceptical, but even a tenth of this rate would be a pretty dramatic improvement over the current networks. Nice.

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Jesus & Mo - a cartoon for annoying religious people

Reposting other people's cartoons is a cheap way to perk up an
otherwise dull blog but at least the creator of Jesus & Mo has done a
good job; it's funny, topical and a bit edgy. And who can resist
tweaking the tails of the two most pompous and self-regarding
religions around?

Find the cartoon in its usual home by clicking: http://www.jesusandmo.net/2010/02/01/error/

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The IPCC and their Himalayan Glaciers; Going, Going, not yet Gone

I've been reading around the subject of the IPCC's error on Himalayan glaciers. Frankly, as someone not intimately familiar with the science, their explanation ("it was a mistake, could have happened to anyone, would you like to read the other 3,000 pages in our report?") sounds reasonable and  anyone interested in knowing the details should a) read the IPCC statement (link) on the error, then b) read the rest of the fourth report.

I've also seen a lot of requests on various fora for the release of raw data to enable people more closely to examine and challenge it. I haven't checked, but I suspect two things:

1. The raw data is probably available, along with lots of information about the models used, their assumptions, the risks, the weaknesses in the analysis and a load of other self-critical stuff and background data, hypotheses and theories, and
2. Most people outside the field, when given the raw data, aren't going to be able to do anything useful with it; they might feel better but they are not going to be better informed.

It's worth noting that the IPCC, when they issued their correction, only said that the estimate of the date by which the glaciers would disappear was incorrect and referred to "poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers". They re-affirmed their conclusion that:

Widespread mass losses from glaciers and reductions in snow cover over recent decades are projected to accelerate throughout the 21st century, reducing water availability, hydropower potential, and changing seasonality of flows in regions supplied by meltwater from major mountain ranges (e.g. Hindu-Kush, Himalaya, Andes), where more than one-sixth of the world population currently lives.

Even if the glaciers don't disappear things could get pretty tricky for the people who currently draw their water from the mountains.

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Laptop Problems - "The operation could not be completed, Dave"

My relationship with electronic gadgets is normally hassle-free; my devices rarely fail or suffer serious problems. One recent exception has been my work laptop (and I’ll be collecting a replacement today as a result) which has developed an issue opening or saving files in MS SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) – every time I click Open File or hit Ctrl-O or try to save a file it just doesn’t do anything and posts an error message “The operation could not be completed”.

This is, as you might imagine, fantastically annoying. The only way I’ve been able to open files in SSMS is to find them in Windows Explorer and double-click them. Saving files involves Notepad++ and is even more frustrating. Extensive Googling has got me nowhere, as have reinstallation of SQL Server 2008 and an attempt to use SQL Server Management Studio Express.

But then a stroke of luck. One of my other applications (MS SyncToy) produced a different, but similar, error and failed to run because it could not access a folder in the document library. That hasn’t helped me to cure the problem with SSMS (which persists to this moment) but, if I were keeping the laptop, I do at least have an idea of where to begin looking for a solution. If you’re suffering something similar, check folder permissions in case something’s gone awry. Or get a new laptop.

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iPhone Feature Request - Unead Items Inbox Filter

Apart from a unified Inbox, the most useful new feature for the Mail
client would be, for me, an Unread Mail filter so that I could hide
items I've already reviewed. This is just one of a host of features
that might improve Mail on the iPhone if they can be implemented
without making the UI horribly complicated. We shall see.

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How do you get to Exeter? Probably not like this...

I'm not sure why you'd want to walk from Fareham to Exeter but I
probably wouldn't have planned a route via Guernsey. That's Google's
suggestion, though - doesn't really appeal.

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Personal Best over 5km

I would be the first to admit that I'm not the sportiest person around. In fact, for many years, I would have been the bloke with the pie taking the mickey out of the fitness freaks with their salads.

I still don't eat a lot of salad (there are limits, afer all) but I try to hit the gym twice a week, I'm (a bit more) careful about what I eat and I don't drink myself silly. I also set myself targets for the treadmill and today I set a new personal best; 5km in 32:52 minutes. Not fast but not bad either. The next target is 5km in 30 minutes, which might be a bit of a challenge.

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iTunes TV Shows - The Thumbnails Aren't Quite Right

I was browsing earlier this morning on the iTunes TV Show page and noticed that the thumbnails seem to be out of sync with the descriptions. Not a very interesting observation, or even particularly amusing, but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway.

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iPhone Feature Request - Find all Communications with a Contact

I see it working like this:

1. Find Contact in the Address Book
2. Tap List Communications (or something similar)
3. See a list of all emails, phone calls, texts, voicemail and chats with that contact
4. Open relevant item.

That allows me to review everything I've said to or heard from any contact. Not useful every day, perhaps, but still quite nice.

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Future Apple iPhones could share current location during a call

Sharing your current location with a contact could be as simple as a button press in a future iPhone upgrade, according to a new Apple patent application revealed this week.

via appleinsider.com

I quite like this idea, especially if I can get the wife to use an iPhone - there are loads of times it would be really useful to be able to tell her "No, not that Starbucks, I'll send you the location".

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CSS3 At-At - Neat, very neat

It only works in webkit browsers but it's really very neat. I'm now looking forward to seeing the rest of the film because, to be frank, the plot does drag a little in this scene.

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Southern Trains - Why do they smell?

I have been using the Southern Trains service from Swanwick to Southampton Central quite a lot in recent weeks and I’ve noticed that the carriages, while generally fairly clean, have a distinctive and not entirely pleasant odour. I can’t work out what it is and, to be honest, I am not really sure I want to know – ignorance is probably bliss in this instance.

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Adobe Flash - Saviour of the Universe?

Lack of Flash on the iPhone OS devices (iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch) has drawn to Apple huge amounts of criticism, especially after last week's announcement of the Flash-free iPad but is Flash really necessary in this bright new decade?

It's certainly widely used for adverts, video, games and various other applications. By Adobe's figures it's a hugely succesful technology, installed on more than 99% of Internet devices and at these levels it becomes a no-brainer; anyone choosing to use something else is just being perverse. But dig a little deeper and you find that the cited 99% is actually 99% of devices upon which it is possible to install Flash (although, given the huge number of PCs in circulation, that doesn't add up to a huge statistical distortion). In my house only 60% of our Internet devices have Flash and number is likely to fall when the iPad is launched.

There are apparently several viable alternatives (I'm told), including HTML5, which seems capable of pretty much anything up to and including repainting the outside of your house. Flash, in the face of new competition, is looking a little "20th Century".

Is it possible to live without Flash? Eighteen months ago I would have said no, plagued as I was by websites that offered only blue blocks instead of an iPhone-friendly alternative. In those days I would happily have installed any old Flash client just to get things going but now, today, it's not really so much of a problem. The sites I regularly visit no longer break on the iPhone and, when I occasionally stumble across a site with a huge Flash navigation panel I just shrug and go elsewhere; no big deal.

Ok, so where am I going with this? Lack of Flash isn't really a problem on the iPhone and it'll be even less of a problem on the iPad as more sites offer compatible alternatives. Far from being Saviour of the Universe, Flash seeks now to be a dead man walking, pelted by apples and already stumbling.

It'll be interesting to see what Adobe do as they strive to maintain their position. Exciting times.

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Who's off the train first? Who cares?

If there were an Olympic sport called Competitive Train Disembarkation
my fellow passengers on the 17:35 from London Waterloo would be
serious contenders for medal glory. The number of people who first
compete for a seat then stand for ten minutes before reaching their
destination is ridiculous, and at best they are off the train fifteen
seconds before me. Nuts.

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